And if you were to ever see me knitting, you would know why - shoulders hunched, needles under my armpits... should I knit left-handed or right-handed, because I am left-handed but do everything else right-handed? Those are my memories of knitting - oh, and being made to sit still in a schoolroom and quietly, and mind-numbingly, knit squares for a blanket while the boys marched on the field and had fun. Admittedly, many of the boys wouldn't agree with the 'fun' part of that sentence, but they had to have known that what they were doing was better than knitting!!
Anyway, being a Mom means having to deal with all sorts of things one never would have otherwise, like changing runny-poo nappies, cleaning vomit-covered sheets at 2am - and knitting!
A few years ago I was in the doctor's waiting room when a girl of about 6 or 7 came in with her Mom and pulled out her knitting needles as she sat down. I thought, "Cool! That's an industrious way to keep the kids busy". It's actually a great skill to learn and it's really good for hand-eye co-ord, so I decided then that I would one day teach my girls to knit.
I've had an article on finger-knitting sitting on my desktop for ages, and do you know that I actually had to ask a colleague where the best place would be to buy a ball of wool from!! Whilst doing the pre-Easter, last-minute-egg-buying in Checkers last month, I happened upon a huge ball of bright purple wool, and knew that the time had come. So one weekend, while Jem dozed, Ella and I popped onto You Tube (because I had lost the finger knitting instructions) and found this video (you don't need to watch it, but it's there if you decide to take up finger-knitting too):
After watching it a million frikkin times I finally figured out the sequence but the woman knits using all four fingers and it just seemed to require way more co-ordination than I was willing to admit to my child I didn't have. "Surely," I thought to myself, "it's got to be easier with only two fingers". So I tried it my own way and 'wham' it worked! Ella loved it and couldn't wait to do it on her own. She watched me a few times - and the next thing my child was knitting long purple trails of wool that have since been used as Rapunzel hair and scarves for toys. She even took her big ball of wool - and her fingers - to Show and Tell on Friday so that she could teach the other kids to knit.
This is our You Tube video - sans instructions :-)
I just think it's awesome when the kids have fun doing something that helps their development, and when they can learn to actually make things on their own, it gives them such a sense of accomplishment!
So Ella learned to knit on Saturday, and took to it like a duck to water, but what happened on Sunday was most disconcerting! Firstly, my Mom almost fell off her chair when she phoned and heard that I had been "knitting". And secondly, while Ella and I sat on the floor of her warm and sunny bedroom while she did her homework, I picked up the ball of wool and started finger knitting. I felt a little cool so I had a blankie over my legs and there I sat with my blankie and my wool. It hit Ella and I at the same time - we looked at eachother and started to giggle. "Mom!" she said, "you're getting to your old age!".
Throw down the blankie, put away the knitting - and give me that glass of wine :-)
xoxo
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