The Basket Lady

Calling all knitters in the River Valley, Basket Lady needs your help with knitting purple baby caps for a new campaign to prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome and Infant Abuse.

Melissa Wakefield, a Maine-ly Families Program Director at Community Concepts, Inc., is asking for your help to knit or crochet from 5 to 50 purple infant caps or as many as you’d like from now until the end of October 2012. The purple caps will be distributed through her program to newborns in November of 2012.

By knitting caps, you will be helping to educate parents about the period of ‘purple’ crying; a time when babies cry more than any other time and this can be very frustrating for parents.

To reach Melissa Wakefield at Community Concepts, call 739-6544, or visit www.clickforbabies .org. The babies thank you very much.

Basket Lady made it to her very first Mollyockett Days festival in Bethel this year and what a wonderful community turn out for this event! The Bethel Common and Main Street offered a variety of vendors and folks were walking and standing shoulder to shoulder eager to visit the many booths. Basket lady was pleased to see that Tammy and Diane from Safe Voices had a booth and so did first timer’s Wendy and Melissa, selling their Sista’s Creations.

Walking around, I noticed a lady sitting behind some tables in front of the Bethel Historical Society with a large sign on one of the tables that read "free phonts." I seldom pass on anything that’s free. Curious, I decided to go over and take a look. There were hundreds of old black and white photos of individuals in every kind of pose and scene that you could imagine.

“The photographer, Don Brown, had a studio in Bethel many years ago and the townspeople always went to him to get their picture taken because they knew that he would make magic out of the old pop light black and white photography that was the only thing available back in the day,” said the lady sitting behind the tables.

I looked through numerous boxes of Don Brown’s magic; but the free photo that I grabbed up was of a, I’m guessing, an adorable blue-eyed and dimpled baby girl, maybe six months old, with long eyelashes, fine blond hair, tiny ears, sitting up against a pillow, looking directly at the photographer with a sly smile that made her tongue partially stick out, wearing a lace dress, socks and shoes; and just when he believes she’s posed, quickly jumps behind the camera, leans in to pop off the bulb and a moment barely passes before the baby has reached down with her left hand to untie her shoe.

The smile on that baby's face is frozen in time.

Don Brown captured that baby oozing happiness and joy. There’s no name or date on the back of the babies photo but earthly angels don’t need a name anyway. Mr. Don Brown, the magic man.

Friends, please knit a purple cap for a precious baby today and the basket lady will be glad to pick up your gift and get it to Melissa, if you’d like. Call: 357-2266.

Love blooms where kindness is planted. We miss you every day, Dot Sanchas! Until then, smile and live in the present.