Kiss My Knits!

I will give a free hat to the first Browncoat from this town to ask, just for get the pleasure of sending something there. So totally worth it.

In today’s girl scout meeting, we’ll be finishing up business from last meeting’s try-it patch. We ran out of time to do s’mores. S’mores presents a challenge in a classroom. One of our girls is bringing a lantern, and we’re going to try to melt chocolate over it. I like her ingenuity. Fortunately, I like all three ingredients in s’mores, so it’ll be tasty no matter the outcome.

We’ll also be working on the “Puppets, Dolls, and Play” badge. I picked up some craft foam from Michael’s craft store, and we’ll be making cunning little puppets with holes cut out for our fingers to be legs. Note picture to the right of the sample I made to be sure it worked. I didn’t want to make it too fancy, because I don’t want the girls to make themselves nuts. I just wanted to try it out and show them one method. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Wearwithstyle is again open for business. My hand is tender when touched, but I can knit just fine. So, hopefully knit night tonight, unless I get too tired. I missed last week, so I hope to make it out tonight!

Behold, Brownie vests for Emily’s multicultural little Brownie troop. Actually, they’re reversible – green on one side, brown on the other, so that the dolls can be either Brownies or Juniors. As you can see, two of them have bridged up to Juniors.

The one on the right was the first one I made, and it shows. To make these, I make two identical shapes with green and brown, sew them together at the edges except for one spot, then turn them inside out by pulling them through that one spot. Then I sew them around the edges again to keep them from being puffy, and seam them at the shoulders. On the one on the right, I didn’t think to make the point that I keep open behind the neck where it wouldn’t show, so her front edge is kind of sloppy. I don’t hear her complaining, though, and Emily is very happy, so good enough.

I let Emily run the sewing machine foot pedal on the straight sections. She did well. It’s a good introduction into how the machine works.

It was a long day of us running hither and yon, and her being super engaged, which means I’m worn out. Don’t get me wrong, we want her to be engaged, but I’m an introvert running on not enough sleep and it’s very tiring. Still, good day. I can’t complain.

I’ve had a recent upswing in orders from non-English-speaking countries. I’m getting some of those folks to send me their native currency, to be a fun learning tool for Emily to learn more about, say, Germany. I’d call them considerate strangers, but Browncoats aren’t really strangers now, are they?

I realized this evening that this is the first year I haven’t thought, “this could be the last year Emily is in mainstream classes.” I don’t want to jinx it, especially since they’re just starting multiplication, but for the first time I’m taking it as a given that she’ll be able to continue on in regular classes. She’ll just have all the many, many other standard pitfalls that kids in school have to deal with, that’s all.

Lord, I’m making myself more tired. Time to go to bed.

Just got out of a parent/teacher conference with Emily’s teacher. No breakdowns or meltdowns like last year, and good marks except in writing (she’s terse) and reading comprehension (“why” questions about stories are difficult in particular). Anything where she has to dig up words from within are hard. Think about the difference between reading a foreign language and speaking it. High marks in Social Studies and Science in particular. My girl’s crazy about space and the planets, and she’s really enjoying learning about geography and other countries.

This is the first year I’ve walked out of one of these conferences without a raging headache. Emily’s different than other kids, no doubt about it, and that’s fine… but this is the first conference where “different” hasn’t translated into “disruptive behavior.”

Of course, while I was typing this, we had a mini-meltdown over a frustrating task here at home, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. I’m still focusing on the positive. This was an extremely encouraging conference, and it felt great to walk out of there feeling hopeful rather than with a black cloud over my head. Keep up the good work, Boo!

Emily wants me to sew little Brownie vests for some of her dolls. She wants this so much that she dug out my sewing machine and lugged it over to me. “And be sure they fit right!” she adds. Fine, Edith Head. I explained we don’t have any brown fabric, but that since there’s no school tomorrow or Tuesday, we can go to the store tomorrow morning and get some. She was momentarily put out, but has accepted it now.

In other craft news, left is foot one of Vinnland. I’m really liking the way these look. I’ve drawn in four stitches at the ankle, and I may draw in another four for a total of 56 stitches. I’m a loose knitter.

Last night the party in Dragonrealms was still going at 2am when I went to bed. It’s the Gauntlet that makes them run so long. The Gauntlet is an arena-like fight to the death where creatures of increasing strength are released at intervals. One person fights at a time in a “kill or be killed” scenario. Nothin’ says ‘wedding’ like a battle to the death!

If someone is attending a wedding, they are involved enough in the game to know someone and garner an invitation, which means they’re involved enough to know how to fight well, which means they’re not going to quickly die in the Gauntlet. No, they’ll live to the bitter end, which means about 15 minutes per contestant. Last night I got pulled away to fix a slot machine during signups, and when I got back there had been more signups than I would have allowed had I been right there. I didn’t have the heart to turn everyone away. The last guy in line wasn’t able to go, because I really needed to shut things down (it was 1:30 am!), but I did give him some consolation booze. He took it in good grace.

The event went very smoothly, the couple was happy, and all the guests had a good time, so I can’t begrudge the late hour.

Emily and I are going to my aunt’s annual barbecue for boarders at her stables. It’s fun to see the horses. I won’t fall asleep on the road, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be a sparkling conversationalist. Pardon, gotta get more coffee!

Emily had a dentist appointment today, and she was SO brave. She had expressed to us some anxiety over the water they use to rinse off the toothpaste. She told us it was too cold, so I wonder now if she has sensitive teeth.

In the office, she was clearly afraid, and she cried, but she didn’t try to stop the dentist from doing what she needed to do, event hough she obviously wanted to. Emily was able to express that she wanted “regular” toothpaste (meaning her usual brand and flavor), and then (without them asking) that she used silly strawberry, and she asked if what they had was mint, and if the floss was mint. She hates mint. She told them about the water being too cold, and they wound up wetting a little paper towel and wiping her teeth off. She was much relieved.

The dental hygienist was very good about calming her down. Emily asked about X-rays and the dental hygienist said she didn’t have to have them today. Great! I had prepared her for that, and even showed her what they do (she’s had them before, but still) but if she doesn’t have to have them this time, then that’s fabulous!

Afterward, I went up and thanked the lady for doing such a good job…and then she asked me to sign a waiver saying that we hadn’t had x-rays today even though it had been a year and she was due for them.

WTF?? I get that Emily’s anxiety level was very high, and I told her I understood why she’d told Emily we weren’t having x-rays, but I pointed out that the anxiety level wasn’t going to be any lower next time. I also noted that Emily had a high rate of cavities.

She offered for us to do them today, but I wasn’t going to drag her back in for X-rays after she thought she was done and had put her jacket on. Now that’s trauma. But I also expressed to her that we couldn’t wait for the next appointment in six months. And that I needed to be sure insurance would cover it, since it was a separate visit, AND that we were going to do it on a day with no school, since we weren’t going to miss another one because of this error. I said it a little more nicely than that. A little.

I repeated that I understood why she’d said that, and I appreciated the desire to calm her down, but it wasn’t really doing her any favors or making things better in the long run. So anyway, now she has an appointment for x-rays only at noon on a no-school day.

I get where the dental hygienist was coming from, but it was the wrong decision. If she’d asked me first, I would have told her that. It makes me wonder if she skimped on other dental care in her desire to get Emily out the door. I’ll never know.

Emily’s class is doing “It’s the Hard Knock Life” from Annie for their Fall musical. Except she didn’t know there was such a thing as Annie. When she found out, she was super excited, so we had to rent it and see it.

She’s been watching it on and off for the past couple of days, doing other things, not really paying much attention, and never actually getting to the end.

Today, she had a very active day. She didn’t get as much sleep as usual last night, and then today she went with her father to Ray’s Splash Planet, then to the mall, so she’s good and tired now. She’s camped on the couch watching Annie and eating popcorn.

Just now, it was revealed that Annie’s parents were dead, something we’d told Emily was probably the case since she was an orphan. But they’re not just dead, they were killed in a fire.

Yikes.

Fire is a fear of Emily’s. She shouts for me to get the stove as soon as the timer goes off, she doesn’t like birthday candles, this is a big worry for her. So now she’s crying off and on, kind of quietly and sadly, and saying that the movie’s almost over. She doesn’t want to stop watching it, because we’ve assured her it has a happy ending, but she’s just so unhappy and tired right now. She wants it to be done.

She is so not ready to watch Bambi.

(My husband, by the way, is in the den with her, and I’m about to go back in – I’m not abandoning my child to blog.)

As sad as this is, it’s still nice to know she has empathy for these sorts of things. So many autistic kids don’t. We’re so lucky in so many ways. And now pardon me, I have to go get some popcorn for a sad little girl.

We’ve been asking Emily for about a month what she wants to be for Halloween. Finally, this week she settled on a costume.

For a few years, she wanted to be a pig. I got pink leggings and a pink turtleneck, sewed a piece of velcro to a pink pipe cleaner for a tail, and cut out and glued pink foam ears to a headband. I also made a snout with a piece of elastic. I have pics, but I can’t dig them up. She was too sick to go trick-or-treating that year.

The next year, she wanted to be a cat. I got black leggings and a shirt and used fusible interfacing to adhere white felt to the front. I took a piece of cording and encased it in black T-shirt material and sewed it to the seat of her pants for a tail. Unfortunately, she was too sick to trick-or-treat again. Talk about bad luck.

One year she wanted to be Jo Jo the clown. That required a trip to the Disney store.

One year, she wanted to be a princess, a decision she made on Halloween evening, requiring me to McGyver together various pink and purple bits of fluff into a costume.



This year? Well, this year she is fascinated with ghosts and vampires and such, and she remembered watching Charlie Brown.

Find a worn-out white sheet in the closet. Cut out the elastic, since it’s a fitted sheet. Snip out two eye holes.

Easiest. Costume. Ever.

Thank you, parenting gods, for smiling upon me this year!

How much of a sleep deficit was I running? I went to bed late on Saturday after staying up to do Jayne stuff… and didn’t wake up until noon on Sunday. And that was only because the phone rang. Ah, bliss.

In spite of the shortness of it, it was a productive day. Stamped up more boxes, wrote more Jayne notes, ripped out an unsatisfactory Jayne hat in untraditional colors and pattern and reworked it so it looks… pretty darned good, if I do say so myself. (, I did get your mail, I’ll take pics of it and a few other things for you hopefully tomorrow.) Did dishes, laundry, picked up long pants in school uniform colors for Emily since the weather’s cooling down. I found the pajamas to the left while shopping for the uniform and just had to buy them. When Emily saw them, she immediately shucked her clothes and climbed in. I hope she’s not sweating too much in bed.

I’m off to bed now, too, to try to stay caught up on my sleep. Y’all have a good night!

Emily told us this morning that she would like a horse from her aunt’s stables. She’d keep the horse in the back yard and bring it inside when it rains. She was laughing as she said this – even she recognizes the impracticality of this plan. It’s still better than her first plan, which was to keep the horse in the washing machine.

Emily has discovered Looney Tunes. We have a box set which she’s enjoying greatly. I’m sure half of these jokes don’t mean anything to her, but then, a lot of these were geared towards adults anyway. The rest, though, she gets. She thinks it’s just delicious how naughty and bad these folks are.

“He shouldn’t go in a mine shaft! Why not?” she’ll ask us, squealing with delight. She knows, she just wants to involve us in the madcap zaniness. They sure don’t show stuff like this on TV anymore. I doubt you’ll find Dora the Explorer with a cigarette dangling from her lips, but the cartoon above showed Bugs rolling one.

Speaking of cigarettes, we were outside at Starbucks yesterday, and someone sat down near us and was about to light one up. I had to put away my Jayne hat knitting because I didn’t want it to smell like smoke, and I think Emily took that as the signal we were going to leave. I told her, “I’m glad we’re leaving, that lady was about to light a cigarette and I don’t like the smell of the smoke.” “What’s a cigarette?” Emily asked. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess nobody in her life smokes. Well, good! We had a conversation and then let it drop. I’m not worried about it. The kid won’t eat cinnamon toast if I tell her I put extra cinnamon on it, she’s not going to start experimenting with tobacco.

I took a week off of the couch to 5k program because I was feeling under the weather. I did, however, start back up. Go me! Today will be day two of getting back on the horse.

Hey, look, I brought it all back around to horses again! I’m queen of the segue!

I’m going to pack up and mail a kit, go run, then arrange for more red yarn. This is the last kit for a while. I’ve had to discontinue the kits until I can get more so that I don’t short my finished hat clients. This shall not stand – I want a chicken in every pot and a Jayne hat on every head!

A big shout-out to my fiber godmother, who has sent me TWO cards in the mail. You’re a sweetie! Thanks!

Y’all have a good day!

Moments ago, my dad sent me a link to a trailer for the new Futurama feature. Thanks, Dad!

Emily has said for the last few days that the girl at school with whom she’s been having trouble is “not my enemy anymore. She’s not quite my friend yet.” But that’s good, both because relations have improved, and because it shows progress from the black/white view that Emily often has of things.

My husband/geek genius has been helping investigate setting up an actual storefront with a checkout cart, etc. It’s an interesting process. My basic html skills aren’t cutting it with this setup, so I may have to learn more about php and forms. Of course, with eight weeks of orders in line, it’s not that crucial to get it up and running, but it would still be nice to have available for already-made goods.

Orders are down to 28 from 32. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but bear in mind they keep coming in while I’m knitting, so any little bit I can whittle the line down helps! Tonight, more Jayne hat knitting while I watch Casablanca. I swear, I’m starting to see Jayne hats everywhere…