In November, I started a knitting club on Mondays after school. Vero had been asking me since my first year at KLA, but I couldn’t bring myself to add something else to my to do list. At the time, my commute was also a lot farther.
But this year, it felt like the right time. We set it up so that classes would begin in November and sent out the class details on a cute Canva flyer. I squealed as she told me 5 of my students had signed up.
The first class was a doozy.
“I don’t know if this is going to go so well,” I told Patrick that night.
I had found all of these beginner how-to videos on YouTube that I thought were pretty easy. I knew to start with the basics: slip knot, cast on, knit stitch. I taught them the vocabulary they would need. I was ready to help them with the cast on like my mom did when I was first starting out, and even pivoted mid-class to show them an easier type of cast on.
“But they struggled to even make a slip knot!”
Luckily, the girls practiced that week at home, and by the second class, a few had mastered each of the new skills, and were helping the others to figure it out. Each week I watched their skills grow, the pride they took in their projects.
We’re in the fifth month of class, and now we have 8 knitting club members: 7 fifth graders and one of their sisters, who is in third.
It’s a funny dynamic each week.
“I don’t feel like knitting today,” E stated on our way to the classroom this past Monday.
So she and other E decided to have a dance/karaoke party to music from Descendants.
Three others sat at my table knitting along with me as I worked on my Eva cardigan by PetiteKnit. The rest sat at a different table, whispering about something as they knit up their squares, headbands, and scarves.
“It’s like a bunch of old ladies getting together and knitting,” I’ve described it to others. “Half of them don’t even want to learn new stitches anymore. They just want to knit and gossip.”
“What happens in knitting club stays in knitting club,” A mentioned one time. She cracks me up.
This month, we’re working on a journalism unit in writer’s workshop and creating a KLA News Magazine. One of my students is writing about the knitting club and interviewed me to get perspective for her article.
“Have you ever considered making a YouTube channel that teaches kids how to knit?” She asked me towards the end of the interview.
“I haven’t,” I replied, a smile coming to my lips as I remembered those first videos that confused the heck out of them. “But I am now!”
Writing With Abandon 
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