NaBloPoMo: Preemie Hat Pattern for Charity

For a few years now, I have been making preemie hats for the local hospitals. They work up about as quickly as a washcloth. I use acrylic, worsted weight yarn and a size 'h' hook. I don't knit them because I'm terrible at knitting in the round on double pointed needles. I am a slow knitter as well, which makes the project a source of frustration. 

Acrylic yarn is hypoallergenic, which is super important for preemies because their immature immune system. You don't want to use fuzzy or extra fluffy baby yarn for these hats. The basic yarn is what you want because the other yarns are overstimulating for their still developing nervous system. I don't use baby yarn because the holes in the hat are bigger given that the yarn is thinner than the sport/worsted weight yarn. We want to have the holes small to help the babies keep their heads warm. While you could use a smaller hook to make the hat with the thinner yarn, it makes the project just as annoying as knitting it for me.

Starting chain: Chain 30 stitches plus 1 to turn.

Rows 1-60: Work single crochet into every stitch.
Bind off at end of row 60 with a long tail.

Fold hat in half and whip stitch to the corner where the fold is. Bind off and break yarn.
With another length of yarn, whip stitch from where the end of row 60 and starting chain meet to the corner where the fold is. Bind off and break yarn.

This size hat will fit a 3 - 5 lb preemie. You want your hat long enough to cover the preemie's eyes when they're under the bilirubin lights in their incubator. This will protect their vision from the effects of the lights. 

NaBloPoMo: Ideas evaporate.

I had insomnia last night. As I laid in bed trying desperately to sleep, I had all of these grand ideas for my serial stories and how to resolve a quandary in the book I'm currently stalled on. I then fell asleep and woke up with only vague memories of the over arching theme of it. It was most vexing. I consoled myself with cuddling next to Beloved and taking a morning nap after my youngest son was out the door and off to school.

I would keep a notebook beside the bed but the last time I did that, my insomnia got worse because I sat up writing. If I were in my 20s, I would bounce back from losing a few hours of sleep writing in the middle of the night. At 47, that doesn't work so well.

NaBloPoMo: My brain hates me.

I woke up today at 0630 and thought I was going to have a productive day. It is currently 2034 (8:34 pm) and I have just begun my writing for the day. I spent most of my day just staring blankly at the computer, the snow falling outside, or my coffee cup. I just had my brain go blank. Did a few errands, so the day was not a complete waste. I wasn't happy with the situation. Beloved tells me to be patient with myself and the process. He tells me to keep in mind that I'm out of practice at doing this stuff. I get grumpy at that fact. But, it is a fact that I can't avoid. It's why I have nothing written at all for NaNoWriMo. 

NaNoWriMo & NaBloPoMo: The wind's shifted.

NaNoWriMo word count: still 0 (it's hard to find time to work on a manuscript right now.)

This morning, I had to step out to run an errand. The first thing that struck me as I stepped out the front door was I could smell snow on the wind. The lower atmosphere is too warm for snow to fall but those clouds are billowing up above. The low tonight is supposed to be 33 deg F. That's just above freezing but I think it might dip into the freezing zone. I don't think we'll wake up to everything blanketed in snow (or ice). But that raw, bitter cold is on it's way in the immediate future.

In some ways this is reassuring. Before climate change kicked into high gear, we'd typically get our first snowfall somewhere between the last week of October and Thanksgiving. The last several years of unusually warm Novembers has had me concerned. I'm a farmer's daughter and I tend to look at the weather patterns from the perspective of how it is going to influence the growing season. It's just something I grew up doing and never really stopped.

We're currently in a serious drought. Whatever precipitation we get would be helpful. Last winter we ended in a drought. It doesn't make sense to say that we were in a drought in winter, but we were. The growing season started late this year because of the flooding and lots of mud that we had in the early spring when planting usually goes on. The summer left us shy of rain and a lot of fields were stunted because of it. When the corn being grown barely comes to your shoulder and in a good year it's taller than you are, it's a rough season.

Surprisingly, there was enough of a harvest that the next town over was still able to hold their annual corn festival like there was no problem. I'm hoping the farmers around were able to get a decent profit off of their corn. It seems like more of that stunted corn was chopped up for silage to be fed to the dairy cattle during the winter than was brought to market to be sold for human consumption. There's a bigger problem than my region's drought, however.

The western and midwestern US have been in extraordinary drought conditions for a couple of years. This is making it hard to grow enough produce, grains, and feed for livestock. As a result, we're operating on a beef shortage for at least the last year. I think the reason why the president is sinking money into the Argentinian economy is because their major export is beef. That's the only logical reason I can come up with.

All these tariffs are hurting the economy here. With bad growing seasons and a major drought spreading slowing across the country, only a fool who is disconnected from where their food comes from would be making these policies. I can only hope and pray for rain or snow. The rest of it falls out where ever the dice land. I'm frustrated that I wasn't well enough to keep a garden this year or do any food preservation. The victory gardens of old are starting to make a comeback as people are doing their best to learn how to preserve their food. People can smell trouble on the wind. It's going to be more than a bad snow storm.

NaNoWriMo &NaBloPoMo: The rules are all made up!

 NaNoWriMo Word Count: 0

 I had a minor freak out yesterday over all of this. It didn't help my migraine any. I panicked that I wasn't going to be able to write again. It had been so long since I had a productive streak on any front that I was afraid that I lost my voice and my ability to tell a story. It wasn't pretty. I ugly cried in the bathroom where no one could hear me for a bit.

 Then a realization hit me. The only one putting pressure on me was myself. It was a rather silly feeling to realize that. I wasn't on a deadline. There wasn't a paycheck waiting for me to meet one. We're not dependent on my writing to pay the bills, keep the lights on, or get groceries. There wasn't anyone stomping their foot and throwing a temper tantrum. It was just my anxiety running riot. It has been doing that a lot over the last year.

I can do my NaBloPoMo posts and work on my NaNoWriMo word count at separate times. I don't need to sit down for 4 hours and write. (Your butt goes numb at about hour 2.5, ask me how I know.) I can write a bit here and there. I just have to schedule and stick to it. There's lots of random downtime in a week that I can use to write a whole lot of words. No need to panic.

NaBloPoMo meme edition with cats!

 I have been stalled on everything. It doesn't help that I've had a migraine for the last 4 freaking days. I blame the weather.

NaNoWriMo & NaBloPoMo meme edition