Knitting Mania

Knitting mania has taken over our house. One member of our family is spending all of their spare time knitting. Who is this knitting fiend, you may wonder? Is it grandma, who comes to visit regularly? Is it me, working hard to create handmade items for Christmas presents? Is it Sarah or Rachel, practicing a newly acquired skill?


No....it is.....






Ben!

Ben is our knitting maniac!




Ben learned to knit at school using an empty toilet paper roll and four popsicle sticks. He initially started knitting with the intention of making Kate a scarf. He has been working on this at school for at least a month.


He brought it home the other day to see if it was long enough to be a scarf. Since it is fairly thin, he planned to wrap or braid it together to make it thicker. We laid it out and decided it was long enough. He could be done.

But...


he didn't want to be.


Here is our conversation:


Me: Great job, Ben. It is long enough. You can take it off and we'll braid it together and Kate can have her scarf.


Ben: But then I won't have a long piece anymore. Mine will be the shortest in the class. Everyone will laugh at me that mine is the shortest.


Me: You can just tell everyone that you are working on your second one.


Ben: No, I don't want mine to be the shortest in the class.

At this point, Kate chimes in: I guess I don't really need a scarf.


Ben: Okay, then I think I will turn this in to a snake. I will add googly eyes and a forked tongue, and then I can make it as long as I want.


Me: Kate, are you sure that you are okay with this? Ben, I don't want you to make Kate sad--you said you were going to make her a scarf.


Kate: It's okay. I don't really need a scarf. She didn't seem sad.

So, you can see it now. This knitting thing has become quite a competition and a status symbol at school. Can you just imagine all these little boys sitting around in their school classroom knitting? It is totally cracking me up. Not to mention David's response to this whole thing...



Ben was thrilled to pose for these pictures and show off the technique. You simply take a toilet paper roll and tape four popsicles sticks around the outside.
Next, you wrap yarn around the inside but overlap the popsicle sticks. You continue looping around and pulling the previous stitch of yarn over the end of the popsicle stick. You end up with a long tube.

Who knows how long Ben's will be?

To add to it all, we got a new issue of Family Fun Magazine yesterday. Can you guess what one of the featured crafts was? You got it, Tin Can Knitting, using the same methodology.

Who knew?