I am a knitter. I learned to knit from my great-grandmother when I was in sixth grade. I have very fond memories of being taken to my "Little Grams" turquoise-decorated apartment by my maternal grandmother and sitting with her for hours learning to cast on, knit, purl, decrease, increase, and cast off. The first project I learned to knit was a washcloth (just like this one). I also learned how to knit these slippers from her, as well as a wonderful winter cabled earwarmer.
When I was in high school, I stretched my knitting skills by attempting to knit a sweater for my boyfriend. The good sport that he was, he wore it to school once for me. Looking back on it, that was very kind of him given how long the sleeves were and how strangely shaped the neck was. And though I decided to knit him a sweater in his favorite color (yellow), perhaps I could have picked a better color of yellow than I did. Oh, and this was an itchy sweater (though it was the early 90s, I have to imagine they had softer yarn back then, but I was a novice and didn't know any better). At the time, I was very proud of my accomplishment.
So now, I have two girls of my own who are old enough to learn how to knit. My eldest is a few years younger than I was when I first learned, but she seems to have picked up the basic knit stitch. Today, I taught her the basics of casting off.
Her project? A pair of fingerless wrist-warmers. It is a very simple pattern - basically casting on 26 stitches and doing a garter stitch until the sleeve of the glove is as long as you want it. Today, she cast off her first glove and I cast on for her second. She is now wearing the single wristwarmer everywhere today.
Today, I introduced my younger daughter to spool knitting. She is using one of these knitting spools. I would have loved to have an old-fashioned wooden knitting mushroom, but when I had been looking for a spool for my eldest a few years ago, this is the one I found! The one nice thing about this is that you can choose between creating a 3-stitch rope or a 6-stitch rope... but otherwise, the spinning and yarn holding features aren't really necessary. My youngest doesn't quite get it, so I sat with her for an hour helping her to hold the yarn taught and pull on the knit rope. She completed her project today (oh so important for those little hands - to have a quickly finished project, otherwise they lose patience). What was it, you ask? A "leash" for when she plays "puppy", her favorite pretend game of all.
