Raising a Knitter - Step One

Pick Your Yarn

Since my granddaughter is 16 months old now, I thought it was time to begin her training as a knitter.  The first step is to get her comfortable being around yarn and handling yarn.  With that in mind, I coaxed her over to my wall of "yarn stash" (it didn't take much coaxing), and proceeded to hand her one ball of yarn at a time.  I let her feel each one and squish each one, checking to see if there was any that she would just naturally bond with.  There was a clear winner - a leftover ball of Madelinetosh worsted yarn.  The niblet has good taste in yarn.

Invent a game

Right away, Mika came up with a game to play with her ball of yarn.  She unraveled just enough of the yarn to have a string to grasp and then proceeded to run down the hallway with it.

Dip it in the Dog Bed

After a run down the hall, Mika bobbed the yarn ball up and down, swinging it along through the living room and then popped it into the dog's bed.  Once that was accomplished, she did an about-face and headed back down the hall.

See how many ways you can swing the yarn.

All of us adults sat in our chairs and watched and laughed as the little one ran back and forth between my knitting/spinning room and the living room with her ball of yarn.  She didn't vary one bit.  She'd head into the yarn room, twirl around, head back down the hall with the yarn, into the living room, over to the dog bed, dip the yarn into the bed, twirl around, and then drag the yarn back to the yarn room.

Concentrate on the feel of the yarn!

We must have watched the back-and-forth parade of yarn for a good ten minutes when Mika decided to add a little variation to the routine.

She took a detour through the dining room and into the kitchen.  Once in the kitchen, she would twirl around and head on back to the hall and on to the yarn room where the entire lengthened routine would begin again.

Nothing gets between a girl and her yarn.

Obviously, this all required intense concentration.  Not even Fresca the Wonder Dog was allowed to distract our little miss from her self-appointed fiber rounds.

Well, there WAS one thing that finally got her to drop the yarn and rest.  Mommy held out a handful of sunflower seeds and that got our girl's attention.  Yes, yarn AND food......a granddaughter after this Nana's heart.