On Passing the Tradition On to the Next Generation.

A momentous day for every knitting parent has arrived at last for me, and sooner than expected. Walker, six years, four months, and four days old, woke up Sunday morning, came into my room, stood next to my pillow and announced in his inimitable way (actually, it sort of is imitable—talk really, really, REALLY loudly and you'll sound pretty close) that he wanted to knit. I groggily assumed that he wanted me to knit something for him and requested that he whisper, but he kept insisting that HE wanted to knit all by HIMSELF (he also insisted that he was whispering). Imagining the inevitable scene of tears and screaming that was sure to come when he discovered that knitting was harder than he thought, I put him off by promising to teach him after church. After church we attended a luncheon for new members (we recently started going back to the Episcopal church that we attended when Walker was a toddler and quit when Camille was a few months old—Sunday mornings seemed too precious to waste wresting children into fancy clothes and then spend a couple hours trying in vain to keep them quiet in a cathedral space designed to magnify noise). I thought Walker would have forgotten by then, but I was fooling myself. We were having friends over for dinner, so I told him I would teach him after I cleaned up the house. Then our guests came and I thought for sure he'd forget after all the excitement, but he reminded me as soon as they left that he wanted to learn to knit before he went to bed, so I got out all my red yarn (his favorite color) and he picked some bulky Icelandic. He wanted to make a hat most of all, so I decided to have him knit a garter-stitch rectangle that I would sew into a tube after it was long enough to go around his head and then gather up one end to close it off. After doing a quick gauge check, I cast on 28 stitches and knit the first row. Walker sat next to me at the diningroom table and I showed him how to go in through the front door, wrap the yarn around, come back out the door and jump off the needle. He got it immediately and wanted to do it all by himself. As he knit along(!), he came up with an analogy of his own: a thief goes in the door, grabs the yarn, runs back out the door and jumps over the fence. The thief wants the yarn to make something really cool for himself. The boy already understands fiber envy, and he's a natural-born knitter! In twenty-four hours, he's knit two inches of garter stitch on size 10 needles and he's constantly pestering me to sit with him and knit. Frankly, it's a little weird. But cool. And I am terribly proud. He'll have lots of time to practice because he's out of school all this week. I learned to knit sort of begrudgingly when I was eight and now of course I wish I'd stuck with it instead of putting it aside after that summer spent at my grandparent's house. I didn't pick up needles again until I was twenty-two and I learned all over again, this time teaching myself from Melanie Falick's Kids Knitting. I used to think about how much better a knitter I'd be now if I'd been knitting all those years, but I've since decided not to have any regrets. I'm just happy I can pass it on to my own children, my son, no less. I'm trying to think of something really cool to mark the momentous occasion like letting Walker pick out his own needles and yarn at the yarn shop after he completes his first project, or something in that vein. He may not stick with it, but I'm happy that he showed interest and took to it so well. And if he's still knitting in college, he'll be beating girls off with size 19 needles. Men who knit are très sexy.