A Duck to Water

Last Saturday Maddie and I sat on our couch for her first knitting lesson.  I was teaching her the steps, the rhyme that goes with it (see below), and telling her to have patience, that it would take a bunch of practice.  She had been begging me to teach her.  I would find her in the living room with a ball of yarn suspended in the air by two needles, floofing the yarn and asking me if she was knitting.  Uh, no sweetie.  Not.  But after our first lesson, she was off and running, er knitting.

She had several rows completed before she even had a question, and many more rows before she noticed that “somethin’ doesn’t look right!”  A minor problem to fix, and off she went again.  On Monday she asked if she could take her knitting in her book bag so she could knit on the bus ride home.  Wow! My heart swelled at her request, but didn’t know what to say…are there rules about knitting needles on a school bus like on an airplane??  Would kids grab the needles and be tempted to use them as weapons?

I didn’t know, but I said:  Well, of course you can take your knitting with you…you can take it wherever you go!  And so the yellow ball of yarn with size 10 needles goes  with her in the car to piano and soccer and to places where she thinks she might be bored. One is never bored when one has their knitting!  What a joy it is to see her knitting..she does it beautifully.  She’s even changed colors from her 16 or so rows of yellow to a vivid red.  She has plans for orange, green and blue next.  She says it’s going to be a blanket for her American Girl dolls.

Maddie had learned to crochet when she was 7…a bit more arduous work for her then.  I don’t know whether it’s because she’s 9 now or because she just takes to knitting easier than to crochet, but it reminds me of that saying–Like a Duck to Water.  It seems that natural for her.

A Rhyme for Learning to Knit

In through the front door

Run around the back

Out through the window

And off jumps Jack!

0 thoughts on “A Duck to Water

  1. Sasa says:

    Great drawing and lovely story. (I hated knitting when I was Maddie’s age, we learned it at school then and haven’t tried ever since. Maybe I should give it another go, sounds fun now…)

    • jenpedwards says:

      You might love it! And you may find that you pick it up quickly since you knitted as a child. I’ve found, as a knitting teacher, that those who had even a little exposure to knitting as children, picked it up much faster than the adults who had not. Bonne chance!

  2. Timaree says:

    What a happy drawing. Give her some circular needles for her bus bag. Size 10 needles have plenty of room for small, learning hands to handle (unlike those #1 needles). I hope she develops a life-long love affair with her knitting.

  3. Ann says:

    Beautiful drawing! And how wonderful that she is interested in knitting. I tried teaching Kiddo to crochet, and she practiced for a while but soon lost interest.

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