Handwork (a posting from Lisa Cadora)

To see the crochet stitches, go to www.knit heaven.com.  Though it does say "knit", there are illustrated crochet directions and patterns as well. I'm sure there are YouTube videos available with instructions as well.

Parents who are doing this at home:

* Be sure your child has the right size hook for the kind of yarn they are using. A slightly larger hook with a slightly smaller yarn works well for starters.

* Some yarns are more difficult to work with than others because the strands separate easily.

* It's helpful to do the second row of single crochet stitches for the child as the first row of chain stitches is difficult to hold and twists easily, causing the foundation to be off from the start.

* A fun pattern to look up online is "The Magic Square" which involves only single stitches in a continous round that really do turn into a square eventually! Fun!

* The ear warmer directions are as follows:

Row 1 Chain stitch length just short of circumference of the head (you want to leave room for stretch)

Row 2 Turn and single crochet back across; chain one and turn

Row 3 Repeat row 2

Row 4 Repeat row 2; at the end of the row, chain TWO and turn

Row 5 Double Crochet in the top of the second single crochet from row 3.
>chain one, skip the next single crochet, double chain in the top of the next single crochet<repeat >< until you come to the end of the row; chain one and turn

Row 6 Single chain in the top of each double chain from row 5 and in the single chain in-between spaces from row 5 all the way across; chain one and turn

Row 7 Single chain all the way across; chain one and turn

Row 8 Repeat row 7 and tie off.