Next Gen Knitters

Teaching my 8 year old niece to join the ranks of Knitters

Around week ago, at 7:30am I got a call from my brother.  Overnight my niece developed a fever, mild, but she still needed to stay home from school.  Both of her parents work and had meetings that they could not get out of that day – so I was next up.  Working from home, I’m generally around and happy to have her come over.  This time was even sweeter still as she asked me to teach her how to knit so that she could join us knitters.

It started out like a normal sick day.  I snuggled her into our couch and put on High School Musical.  For me, it was a typical work day – I had morning meetings to discuss some of our current projects.  So we both kind of hung out and did our thing.  Later, over lunch, we chatted about a few things, one of which was knitting.  How old was I when I started? How did I get so good? And could she start.  My heart leapt for joy.  Of course she could start! But I still had some work that needed to get done, so I furiously attacked my remaining deliverables for that day.  My niece patiently waited for me on the couch, while my labrador Murphy made sure that she was not lacking in the snuggles department – at all.  I mean he was practically on top of her (and he probably weighs three times as much as her little body).

Finally, it was time to knit.  We went back downstairs to where my knitting stuff is stashed and selected a nice acrylic yarn (that I had used to make her sister a Christmas present last year) and a pair of circular needles that weren’t too big, and weren’t too small.  Our house is a bit cold in the basement and with her not feeling well, I led her back upstairs to sit in the sunlight.  I debated whether to show her how to cast on or not, but decided that the knit stitch was the better place to start, and didn’t want to overwhelm her.  So I cast on a few stitches – enough for a good sized scarf and for her to get into a rhythm on each row.  Then, I demonstrated the knit stitch.

Now, my niece is eight.  And when you teach kids, there is this “the little bunny goes around the tree…and the little bunny does this…” kind of a rhyme.  But she’s a bit old for that and I wanted her to feel like she was learning something new and cool.  So instead, we chose to say:

“Put your needle in through the front, or “front door”,  then wrap the yarn around it.  Then you gently use the needle to grab that yarn and pull it back through”.

This worked well for her.  She’s a lefty so she was tempted to do things a bit backwards in terms of which hand does what, and which side of the knitting we were inserting the right hand needle.  We decided to call the front side of the stitch,  the “front door” and the backside of the back side of the stitch, the “back door” – just to differentiate the two and kind of make it easier to identify.

After a bitt of working on the basics, she got into a rhythm.  I’m a “thrower” and so was teaching her to hold the working yarn in her right hand, wrap the yarn around accordingly.  I have trouble working in continental style, so I was not going to be able to teach it.  And there is a lot going on with that style for little hands to manage.   For her first time, she did great.  She was very focused and loved learning, even though it took a lot of practice.  I knit a few rows quickly in between hers, to show her how the scarf would unfold, and make it a bit more exciting.

A few in my knitting Facebook group pointed out that she was wrapping the yarn clockwise instead of counter clockwise and that it could potentially cause problems later on.  One thing I learned in coaching, when there are multiple things to focus on and improve, pick one.  And make that something small enough that it’s easy to adjust with a bit of practice.  Otherwise you risk sounding really negative and making learning something new intimidating – or more so than it already is.  We left the direction of her “throwing” for another day and in this first sitting, worked on holding the needles, and inserting the needle, and working the stitches from needle to needle.  Which is a lot for an eight year old with small hands.