Knitting and Crafting

I am very happy to report that there has been a sudden phase shift at home. Children go through these phase shifts all the time and most of the time, these shift are subtle and we never notice them. Although we say things like - she is going through a difficult phase, or she is going through a phase where she throws tantrums.

Since Anjali wove the doormat, I thought of reintroducing her to finger knitting once again. But since it required the long term disablement of my fingers and since we usually didnt sit long enough for her to do a decent length of finger knitting, I decided not to. Then I was reminded of knitting nancies and decided to make the standard one using icecream sticks and a toilet paper role.

Here is was, an invitation to play in the morning 

Sophia had been talking a lot about making a cardboard garden and here was an invitation for her, with the studio on the floor

Anjali has suddenly developed a strong passion for crafting. YEsterday I came home finding the Kumon paper craft book and Anjali sitting with pieces of paper arouond her and making all the models in it - leaping bear, rocking bear and stuff like that. And since she had started to read instructions - her reading had improved dramatically -  she worked on most of the crafts independently.

Anyway, Anjali took to the knitting nancy much better than she had on previous occassions

Here is the knitting nancy the next morning and you can see the knitted portion coming out of the tail of the nancy. Ad first Anjali preferred to pull with her fingers . Then she began to try with the crochet hook. Though it took longer and I didnt fore her to learn, she figured out how to use the crochet hook by herself.

On Tuesday evening, when I came back from work, Anjali, myself and Sophia saw \in a circle on the liviong room floor. I was working on Sophia's mermaid costume, Anjali was knitting and at the same time helping Sophia with her box garden.

"You get better at knitting as you grow older", I told her.

"I know", she replied. "You know the doormat that I wove? One half of it is full of holes and the other half is very nice."

"Yes", I replied. "You did the first half long ago"

"When I was four years old?", she asked.

"Yes", I said. "And now you are five, and see how much your weaving has improved? And Sophia also", I added, indicating a scribbled drawing which had the position of pride near the front door. "See how Sophia used to draw when she was one year old"

"Its all scribbles", said Anjali

"Yup. Its all scribbles", yet look at her now, she is planning a box garden

Sophia had made a butterfly with some old wrapping paper and a pipe cleaner and going

"Na na ni boo boo. I will tell Eunice that my garden is better than her. I have a butterfly, she has no butterflies!"

We smiled.