Boy Wonder and the Flag

Things finally worked out so that The Knitting Boy Wonder had his pillow pieces and I had my camera at the same time that there was a chance to do a quick photo-shoot. This student is 9 or 10 years old and received instruction in the knit stitch, casting on, and casting off. That is all. Furthermore, he is just one of a group 0f about 20 students. I posted previously about his exploits in which he invented decreasing and mosaic knitting. You may recall the cat saddle.

This flag is what The KBW showed up with on the occasion of his 4th or 5th knitting class. During the preceding class he asked for red, white, and blue yarn and asked me how I'd make a U.S. flag. I told him I'd draw it out first to get the colors in the right places. I gave him a piece of paper. He had no other help. The KBW has now invented intarsia. It's not perfect and it's probably not intarsia, but it's a field of one color interrupting fields of other colors. You can see that the field of blue is very messy at the lower right corner and that it improves as you go up. That's precisely how it was knit--from the bottom up. It was not sewn in later. There are plenty of other design features that KWB may not have intended ;) but they just go to show that he is indeed a beginner.

I'm waiting to see what else The KBW will invent. It's been slow lately because he's bogged down a bit on this: It's the back of the American Flag pillow. I'm sort of wondering when he will invent the purl stitch. So far he hasn't needed or wanted to learn it, or I'd teach it to him. Knitting club is super busy for me. I spend most of my time with kids who tend to frustrate easily or who haven't yet mastered the knit stitch. Then there are the kids who are making projects that need sewing. Doing/teaching that is time consuming also. It's a wholly different technique.