Baby Hats

My daughter’s band director sent home a letter the other day saying that the various school bands he works with are going to be auctioning off gift baskets to raise money to reduce the cost of running the band programs. He is asking parents to donate items for the baskets. Bethany’s band is doing a “family game night” themed basket, and I so wanted to crochet one of these fluffy dice floor pillows (from the book “Kooky Crochet” - checked it out from the library), but I don’t have the yarn/materials I would need for it, and I can’t spend any money on yarn while I’m not working.

Parents can also donate items for any other bands’ basket (the money raised all goes to the same place anyway), so I decided to crochet some baby hats with stash yarn for a baby-themed basket. Here’s what I came up with:
What do you think?

I used some patterns from magazines for inspiration, and then heavily modified them. The pink hat is Strawberry Cream Cotton-Ease, and the blue one is Red Heart Soft in Blue Sky, White, and Chocolate. I think the pink hat looks closer to a toddler size, and the blue one is definitely newborn-sized.

When I was pregnant last year, my mom gave me some baby spoons (the coated kind) and a musical rattle – obviously I never got to use either one since I had a miscarriage, so I’m going to donate those too if I can remember where I put them.

Well, I’m still job hunting, with no luck, and getting ever more frustrated, depressed, and worried. I found a couple of more government jobs to apply for here in the Cleveland area – one with the Social Security Administration, and one with the Coast Guard (civilian job), but the hiring process for government jobs is notoriously slow. I've applied for a bunch of other private-sector jobs too, but haven't heard from any of them yet.

My sister’s wedding is 12 days, and I still have to figure out how I’m going to afford to pay for the alterations on mine and Bethany’s dresses - a whopping $140 : ( not to mention having any money to get our hair done on the wedding day. I don’t even know what to do with my hair half the time on regular days, let alone for a special occasion. 99% of the time I have it in a ponytail. I only took it down for my blog hat photos, because I can’t wear a hat with a ponytail.

Did I ever mention that I hate my hair? If not, here it is: I hate my hair!!! I’ve always hated it. I told my husband that I've been cursed with bad hair. The color is fine (well, I dye it regularly so I get to pick the color!), but I hate the texture. I hate that it can’t decide whether to be wavy or straight, and that it always insists on curling up in the worst possible places - think about me growing up in the 1980’s, when big, heavy bangs straight across the forehead right above the eyebrows were in style for little girls, and mine would always curl up on the side ends and look like wings. I'm still mad at my mom for getting my hair cut like that, LOL! I have long sideswept bangs in the front of my hair now and I won’t leave the house in the morning without scorching them with the hot iron and hair spraying them into submission, because I can’t stand for them to curl up.

Anyway, as much difficulty as I have with my own hair, I have about twice as much with Bethany's - extremely thick, very tightly curled, black/white biracial hair is no picnic for a white woman to deal with. My husband can get her hair a lot neater than I can, but neither of us can manage anything beyond ponytails or the occasional braids (which she hates anyway – she says braids look babyish).

So, I don’t know what to do now, because I can’t drop out of the wedding this late, but with only one income (even with my husband working all the overtime he can get), we're still barely able to afford the basics, let alone any extras. What lousy timing for me to have to lose my job when I did.

Sigh…