Caps to the Capitol Needed!!

A couple of months ago, I became aware of the Caps to the Capitol project, a joint effort of The National Needlework Assn and Save the Children. Babies born here in the US get tiny caps right away, to help keep them warm. But it is estimated that some 4 million newborn babies die in developing countries every year, of various causes, including losing body heat through their heads. The Caps to the Capitol Project hopes to provide visible evidence to our new Congress that citizens want to provide more help to mothers and babies in these countries. Accordingly, the Project asks for knitted or crocheted caps to be donated, to be presented to Congress in January.

I asked my seniors' group to contribute, and the ladies have come through in fine fashion! I just counted and boxed up 74 - yep, SEVENTY-FOUR!! - baby caps. Here's a picture. I want to toss in a couple more, and then I'll be sending these off.

Yesterday, I got a newsletter from Bernat, with an update on the progress of the Caps to the Capitol Project. Here is the sad little tally. They noted that so far only 149 caps had been received from all of California. One hundred forty-nine.

SAVE THE CHILDREN / WARM UP AMERICA! KNITTERS & CROCHETERS FOR NEWBORNS Caps to the Capital Program Update

Launched in mid-July, the KNITTERS & CROCHETERS FOR NEWBORNS: Caps to the Capital program runs until the end of year, which means we have one month left to help meet their goal:
• 75,000 participants
• 250,000 caps

Caps and letters are starting to trickle into Save the Children headquarters in Westport, CT. The latest count:
• 2,154 people participated
• 1,433 notes
• 24,668 caps

I have to say that I am rather dismayed. While the Project may have had too-optimistic goals, less than 25,000 caps from across the US is pretty sad. On a per-capita basis, the results - 10 caps per participant - are great, but lots more knitters and crocheters need to contribute.

So, PLEASE!!! Go to the website link above, or go straight to the PDF file with the Caps to the Capitol program info, share it with your knitting group or knitting friends, and send off some baby caps. These will be a great little change-off project from your bigger holiday knitting or crochet projects. There are patterns on the PDF file, for crocheted or knitted caps, including directions for knitting the hats flat if you're not a dpn fan.


On the personal knitting front, not much has happened since my last post. I finished 2 watch caps yesterday for a local drive to send warm hats to our soldiers and sailors. One of the women in my seniors' group is collecting these, and our group has made 150 hats; we culled hats with the appropriate styles and colors from all that we had made during the year. I still need to sew in the 'leventy-dozen ends on my gift hats for Alaska, block the scarves, and then sort through my gift stash to see what I still need to buy.

And here's a couple of fun little pictures of Midnight and Shadow. This is "My Cats on Drugs". They looked so cute soaking up the sunshine that I dusted around some catnip, in the kitty bed and on the floor. Midnight is rolling around with her sockie, while Shadow is zoning out in the kitty bed.