Lessons To Learn

I enjoy teaching knitting to children for several reasons.  First, when knitting is new to them and probably because they are still in elementary school, they are listening because it's new, they aren't familiar with what is supposed to happen and second because they don't have any problem when their finished product isn't perfect.  There's just sheer joy that they finished at all.

That is the case with my young next door neighbor, Erica.  She started a project a couple of months ago when I asked her to pick three colors from the donated yarn drawer and to knit 10 rows of each color three times, and 20 rows of her favorite color.  She learned how to add colors to her knitting, and that was new for her.

She asked what we were making, and I told her it would be a caterpillar.  She looked at me as if I'd lost my mind.  Fast forward a couple of months, and with a little help from her teacher (that would be me) we ended up with this:

When I handed it to her, her jaw dropped.  She got a huge smile on her face and ran inside her house.  I could hear her squeal with delight from inside my own house.  Too cute!  It's not perfect, but it was made with her own hands, it was finished and it was what I said it would be.  For Erica, today knitting is a good thing.

Speaking of not perfect, do these socks look the same to you?

I think I used a US #2 on the right sock and a US #1 on the left.  I'm not sure, it's kind of hard to tell - maybe I need to get a little further on to really tell the difference.

What I can tell you is that I don't have enough to make a third sock, so .... whichever sock fits best means the death knell for the other sock.

Stay tuned.