Crocheting a Bookmark

Mom was released from the hospital this afternoon. Details follow as part of this post.


Mom (re) taught me to crochet this month. I asked her to look at this bookmark I found in one of my Dad's books when I was here in 2007 and see if she could figure out how to duplicate it and teach me how. She said it was just a variation of the granny square stitch which she'd taught me when I was in high school. That was long and long ago and with fat yarn not crochet thread.

The picture above features the just tied off variegated white and purple one we made next to the pastel green and pink one we were copying. Below is the purple one fresh off the hook with the spool of thread. That is a size 10 hook for those in the know and curious.


I was intending to get a picture of it with a row or two still left to do but I forgot in all the hullabaloo that went down Saturday evening. I was working on it while sitting in the hallway outside the bathroom door while Mom was showering. I was turning the corner on the penultimate row as she opened the bathroom door so she could visit as she combed her hair at the sink.

I chattered away about how I thought it was close to the right length but that it was kinda messy looking because I had not got my tension on the thread under control until a row or two ago and I had possibly also miscounted stitches having what looked like extras in places. And I wondered if I should pull it all out to the point where she left off and do it over now that I had got the hang of it.

And she said she would look at it later but right now she was just too tired. She started to come through the bathroom door with her walker heading for her recliner in the living room. I kept chattering.

This chattering to Mom is something that developed on this visit in response to the awkward feeling silence when hanging out with her due to her post-stroke aphasia. Mom was the one who used to carry the weight of conversations. She was a talker! And a fast one. It was hard to get a word in edge-wise--even answers to questions she asked. So these past months have been an exercise in adapting for all of us. Her aphasia is much improved. Much. But she still stumbles over words and talks at less than half the speed she used to with less animation. And wears out easily.

So all that was to establish why I wasn't alarmed at the silence at first. Until I realized that the sounds of the walker and footsteps had also stopped. I glanced up from my crocheting to see the walker abandoned half through the door, Mom having backed away from it to lean against the sink counter. She was standing there with her arms hanging limp at her sides gazing at the floor.

Well, I guess I don't need to retell the same story I told in Saturday night's post.

Mom was released from the hospital in the early afternoon today. The results of some of the tests they did are not in so we are still waiting to find out if they think they have safely ruled out a serious issue. The prevailing theory and the one for which her release papers gave excruciatingly detailed information on cause and prevention was that she had an episode of syncope aka fainting due to sudden lowering of blood pressure. This can be an innocuous thing common to just about anyone if circumstances are ripe for it. But it could also be a symptom of a heart or neurological condition which they are doing due diligence to rule out.


This evening my cousin took me to a fabric store to shop for ribbon for the finishing touch for the bookmark. Of all the mountains of things Mom has saved over the years, including sewing supplies, you would have thought we could find eight inches of white, lavender or purple ribbon. But after spending over an hour searching my sister said it would just be easier to go buy some. So she called our cousin who was bringing dinner over to us to see if she could take me shopping for it.

Time was of the essence because I wanted to put it in my Mother-in-law's birthday card which I was already late mailing as her birthday is Wednesday. So our cousin agreed but it would be several hours before she arrived. I used the time to, among other things, tuck the beginning and ending tails into the stitching, take the pictures of the project, prepare the birthday card and envelope, and prepare a clipboard with white paper on it as a photo background that I could use in the car after threading the ribbon through and also pack a small scissors for cutting the ribbon and my camera in my purse. I wanted to put it in the mail before coming home. And we did.

I was hoping to get a spool of white ribbon that I could use with any of the colors of thread I have. I was given my husband's grandma's sewing basket after she passed in 2007. In it were a lot of partial spools of crochet thread in a variety of colors and weights and I've had this idea for making bookmarks with them for over a year and a half now.

The store my cousin took me to was having a clearance sale because they are in the process of moving down the block into a larger building. The ribbon was 5o-80% off. But we could not find white! Nor plain satin finish. I didn't want to buy six dozen yards of ribbon just to make sure I had all the colors I needed so we discussed leaving and going to Wal-Mart. But she was enamored of this pale lavender ribbon saying how it would look awesome with the bookmark and offered to buy it for me and then let me get the white later. I agreed to this and then I'm not sure what happened but she started picking up spools until there were some six or eight of different colors including two rainbow striped and a polka dot. She said she had been meaning to do something for me for the work I did last January on her son's homeschool high-school trascript which he urgently needed for an upcoming job interview.

So I'm all set to make more of these bookmarks. I should have thought to grab a picture of the pile of ribbon spools before uploading the contents of my camera but I didn't think of it until after I had started preparing these pictures for the post. And by then it was after ten--my cousin and I not getting back here until nine. Oh, well, maybe another time and I could include the spools of crochet thread too.