Planning for 2013 has been both easy and hard. Easy in that I know I will be incredibly busy - school, work, family and so much more will be occupying my happy days. But also hard, in that I’m not sure just how much time or energy I will need to devote to each of the parts of my life on a daily basis.

The chaos of not knowing usually sends me up in arms, and so I decided early in December to pick one big project to accomplish in 2013. One large-scale thing that could carry me through my days, weeks and months. Something trackable, attainable and yet hard, something that wouldn’t take up too much brain space but be ever-present.

I decided to knit a marathon for charity in 2013.

Knitting A Marathon

A marathon breaks down to 46,145 yards, or approximately 300 adult-sized hats. This I know I can do - it will be a challenge, but I know I am up for it.

Hats are my life mission, my calling. I can carry a skein of yarn and some needles with me just about anywhere I go, and I love to work a pattern on repeat until I’m surrounded by dozens of identical hats, ready to be given away.

So this part was simple enough to figure out. I’ll be grabbing yarn from my stash until I’ve run out, and will knit away until I reach 300 hats. I’m sure to knit patterns on repeat (current loves are Sandoval and Tyson), but there will also be plenty of Hats On People hats showing up and I have big plans already for Christmas next year!

To make tracking the hats super easy, I’m making them all adult-sized - that way I can take a quick picture with my phone when the hat is done and share it on Instagram! You can follow along with the hats on Instagram as well if you please, under the tag #knitmarathon.

I’ll be sharing these hats here each week - the Hats On People hats will wait until I get photos of them on their owners, and the charity hats will be shared as I finish them - or once a week if I get caught up with a pattern and make more than one of it.

A Marathon For Charity

The best part of this project (to me, anyhow) is that I’ll be knitting this marathon for charity! Not only will I be giving away every hat to a variety of charities (I’ll pick a different one each month), I’ll also be donating $1 to charity: Water for every hat I knit!

I’ve been thinking long and hard about how to continue donating to charity: Water - they’re my favorite charity by far! Because the shop is closed down, donating a portion of sales is out. And while I’m sure to donate my birthday this year, I wanted to have something I could do consistently to continue to bring clean drinking water to folks around the world.

I’m not asking anyone else to join in on this (although your donations would be much loved and put to good use), but I will be updating the donation total here on the blog as the year progresses.

If I make more than 300 hats (say, if I get all crazy and make a bunch of baby hats to donate this summer) I’ll donate more money. If I end up making less …. well, that’s not going to happen!

I’ve already got my yarn for January set aside waiting to be cast on (see the giant pile on the couch above), and I’ve put up a mirror in our foyer (the room that gets the best natural light in the house) to make picture taking easiest! Now all that needs to happen is for January 1 to arrive so I can get moving!

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