Elaine’s Rule about crocheted baby booties

You must crochet at least three booties to get two that are presentable….  These are made of Lion Brand’s Microspun, which is very soft and very white, but also has a tendency to split if one is not careful with the crochet hook. 

Bibs, bibs and more bibs….

So, I tinkered with the pattern and made a smaller, drool-sized bib out of worsted weight Cotton-Ease, also for S’s teacher.  Then I stopped by Michaels and picked up Patons Grace cotton yarn (a little heavier than sock weight) and made one that I’ll give to the woman who will be E’s teacher in the late fall when she gets back from maternity leave for having her first girl!

Busy Weekend

With E’s broken collarbone, we didn’t wander far from home this weekend.  It gave me plenty of time to work on finishing up some gifts for S’s expecting teacher. 

This was my first attempt at crocheting booties – it took 3 booties to get 2 that I could stand giving as a gift: 

I also found a really cute pattern for a bib.  I decided to knit it in S & C cotton, however, it became clear that the yarn that the author of the pattern used was lighter than worsted weight.  So, the bib is a little big for a small baby – it will be better at 12 months when he starts eating – so I’m tinkering with the pattern to try making another one that is smaller and more appropriate for drooling.  Of course, I didn’t think to pick up some Patons Grace yarn while at Michaels today, because that yarn would definitely be lightweight enough.

Baby Blanket #2 DONE at last!

My first crochet project was a baby blanket that I crocheted for my sister’s newest baby that I made in February and brought over to Israel with me when I went to visit.  The pattern was from the First Crochet book, which I used to teach myself how to crochet.  It isn’t the greatest photo, but I can’t reshoot it now that it is halfway across the world being spit up on. 

I started this baby blanket for S’s 1st grade teacher, who is due with her first child (a boy) next month, over a month ago.  I got about 18 inches into it and decided that I didn’t like the yarn that I was using, so I bought new softer yarn and started anew.  I like how the pattern looks, but I really didn’t like crocheting it – too many bobbles made it very sloooooow going and if I didn’t pay attention, I got off by 2 stitches and had to rip out many a row.  The pattern is from Michael’s website.   I’m going to try my hand at matching booties over the weekend (I’ve never made any before) with leftover yarn.

 

4 hours in the emergency room…

E broke his clavicle in school today.  The minute he stepped off the bus, I knew that something was drastically wrong and called my dh to come home so that I could take him to the emergency room.  One of the challenges of having two kids with autism is that one parent can’t manage both of them at places like an emergency room, so I couldn’t take E in until dh came home to watch S. 

 E was a trooper.  He clung to the stuffed bear that they gave him and his blankie.  He bravely went through x-rays and examinations – no crying.  Although, I started to cry when they finally gave him some tylenol with codeine at 8 pm (we got there at 5) and he smiled for the first time at about 8:30. 

I’ve gotten trips to the ER down – I thought to pack a dinner for him tonight, so even though we were there from 5-9, he was able to have a few things to eat (gogurt tubes, string cheese, goldfish). 

Of course, there is no way to really immobilize a collar bone on a child that is liveable.  So, he has a sling and will have to live with some discomfort.  We will head to Old Navy tomorrow and buy a supply of shirts that button up the front – he almost cried when I had to pull his pj’s on over his head and raise the arm of the side of the break. 

He finally just fell asleep, the angel.

Up all night

S has had a bad week sleep-wise.  Up several nights in the middle of the night this week, even though he still gets melatonin and Clonidine nightly to help with the sleep issues. 

 Last night the first of his two front baby teeth fell out.  A combination of the excitement, the weird feeling of that gap, and his own body chemistry resulted in his waking up at 2 a.m. and never quite going back to sleep.  I finally got up with him at 6:30 to prevent him from waking his brother with all that noise in his bedroom  We have his doorknob turned around, so we can lock him in there at night to prevent him getting out of the house while we sleep, but he tends to lie awake in bed “chattering” away during these periods.  And he’s pretty loud about it. 

The whole sleep issue is one of those things that clearly illustrates to me a neurotransmitter imbalance component to his autism.  We go through periods where he is fairly calm and will sleep the night through, but then a switch goes off and we go through periods where he is unable to shut his brain off long enough to get a full night’s sleep.  Which means I don’t either.  Sigh. 

Ouch, my eyes!!!

So, I have a friend, who shall remain nameless (coughcoughAnnacoughcough), who goes to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival and sees these really cute sock blocker keychain kits, so she orders a few.  When they come in, she reads the instructions, realizes that it calls for working a small number of stitches on size 0 needles, so she thinks “Oh, I’ll send a couple to Elaine,” knowing that I will see this as some sort of sick challenge. And, of course, I did. 

 So, yesterday, with some yarn leftover from my ankle socks, I got out my size 0 dpns and cast on 16 stitches to work my “sock” while the Roto Rooter man was in the kitchen trying to unclog my kitchen sink.  He’s swearing in there, and I’m swearing out in the living room, ripping out the whole thing a few times because I can’t pick up the stitches I’ve dropped, TWICE! 

Nothing like working a 8 stitch heel flap and then trying to pick up tiny stitches along the side.

I managed to finish it up after teaching my class at UoP last night and to top it all off, I’m such a tight knitter that I made the sock too small and I actually had to get the thing wet before I could fit it over the blocker! 

Anyhow, it will make a great keychain, so, THANK YOU, Anna, for the wonderful challenging gift.