misc. cont.

Here's the rest of the photos I wanted to upload yesterday, but Booger (oops, I mean Blogger) was being LAME.

I was going to come back in the afternoon and work on it, but thanks to Inky, I got completely frickin' lost over at hoops&yoyo. I was there for way too long. Sheesh. What a riot though!

Ok. So. What I was tryin' to show you yesterday, was that I had bought a second wrist knitting bag thingy, and here it is:

(it says: We spent hours in the garden. That sounds romantic. Who loves a garden, love a greenhouse too.) ??!

I think it's funny, but the black one I showed yesterday is my favorite. I'm not a big fan of butt-brown, but it will get used, I assure you.
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The other stuff I wanted to post was MyFK's knitting.

I know this is going to seem like I'm going on and on about how wonderful and cute my kid is, and well...yeah. I am. Whatever. And, by the way, this is not a rant/rave about my "parenting skills" either. There's a reason I'm excited about MyFK knitting, and I want to document it for posterity's sake--like a digital scrapbook.

MyFK is not just knitting. He's knitting again.

For his first project, which I think was started late last summer, MyFK wanted to cast on for a scarf. He didn't get very far when he decided he didn't want to knit for weeks with the grey he'd chosen. He declared it "bo-rinnngggg." So he bound-off and made it into a washcloth instead (bonus for me, because he actually LIKES washing with it).

Pretty decent for a first-timer, eh? The usual little issues. Dropped stitches, the occasional wonky stuff. But a good first knit.

So I take him shopping for new yarn, and he chooses a variegated yarn...for again, another scarf.
Check it out:










His second project, and it's pretty damn precise! It gets a little wider as it goes, sure. But not by increasing stitches...it's getting wider because he's relaxing and finding better tension!

Unfortunately, at some point several months ago, he got bored with the scarf (scarves are just too damn long for newbies, in my opinion)...and even worse...somewhere in that time period, he brought the scarf to Show & Tell at school (3rd Grade, he's 8), and some of his buddies told him only girls knit. *sigh*
Fuckers.

Now, I am not the type of parent to coerce a kid into a hobby they aren't going to be in love with. As my friend Diana once said (paraphrased), "I don't really care what it is you are into, but whatever it is, please be passionate about it." You will never see me forcing MyFK to take up a martial art, play violin or take piano lessons...unless he's declared that he loves it and just needs a little nudging to help keep his eyes on the prize. Some things just dont come overnight.

In my opinion, MyFK had fallen in love with knitting and he was giving up something he loved due to peer pressure. As a parent, I would have done my damndest to help with that whether it was knitting or playing ukelele while doing a headstand. MyFK had told me that he, "loooved knitting because it relaxes me, kind of like meditating at the dojo...but I dont have to sit perfectly still and empty my brain...I can move and think at the same time." He also told me that he wanted to, "make sweaters for all my friends with their names on it." That sounds like knitting love to me.

So over the past several months, I've very casually shown MyFK many a website in an attempt to band-aid the peer pressure boo-boo. Just to name a few, I showed him CoolBoysKnit, ThePanopticon, QueerJoe, and most recently Sweater Project. I showed him Jesse Loesberg, aka YarnBoy, whom is a Bay Area Native, and when MyFK came into ArticlePract with me one time, we bought one of Jesse's "Boy's Knit" buttons, just to prove it was a true and legitimate fact. I showed him the whole Man Issue of Knitty. Somewhere in there, I think my dad even talked with him about Rosey Grier. I bought a kids knitting book with projects "non-girlie" and in that book are pictures of boys his age knitting. I even brought him to a kid's knitting class at Skein Lane because I got a lead that there would be another boy there.

MyFK thought that was all find and dandy, but back into the bag the scarf went anyhow.
And he went from wanting to learn how knit his own socks to asking me to knit a pair for him.

Poo.

Meanwhile, during this time, he'd been asking me to knit at least one row of every single project I've worked on. He basically decided he wanted to have a hand in all of my projects. He knit a few rows of FunFur on Addi Turbos ( for the Rockstar Scarf), which even I had hard time doing. And he also knit a couple of rounds on the socks for my mom! Size US#2 dpn's! But still, he wouldn't pick up his own knitting again. He was even turning down my offers to buy him fancy-schmancy yarns (I wasn't going to rule out that using wool/acrylic blends is what was turning him off).

Well, things finally took a turn last week. Surprisingly, MyFK was quite interested and inspired by the blanket assembly party. I'd only brought him along because I couldn't find a sitter--there were no other kids there. But when we left the party, he'd asked me to teach him to knit with two colors. You think I'm gonna turn that down?!!

As I type this, he's pretty much obsessed with the washcloth thing right now. He hasn't even asked to play video games (woohoo!). Instead, we've been hanging out together watching Looney Tunes on DVD and knitting. It's been grand.

So here's where we were with our washcloths yesterday morning (I've promised to knit along at the same pace, so that we finish at the same time...when I get to the end of a row, I knit on socks while I wait for him).

(MyFK's is the Orange/Green on the right...he insisted on using circulars, so I got stuck with the plastic kiddie needles hahaha....mommy's is the pink washie)

The only thing I've helped him with is carrying the unused color up the side, but I think he's getting that down, too. He's even reading the fabric....he's not using the printed pattern, just looking at the fabric and understanding where the slipped stitches go, whether the yarn is carried to the front or the back, etc. I'm impressed.

And it's fun for me to have someone to hang out and knit with ;-)