Corrupting the Young

You want to. You know you do. The urge to twist and warp little minds is just something no one can control.

It starts with your own kids; quietly and by stealth, so no one notices. But one day they're knitting squares to make into Herbie

& Reg,

garter stitch dogs extraordinaire from Kids Learn to Knit, or little hats for charity

and the next thing you know, they're knitting something secret for somebody who might read the blog



and giving you Bambi eyes for a skein of hand dyed sock yarn that they swear that they are going to knit up themselves (just as soon as I pick a pattern from your pattern stash, mom, honest).

But that's not enough. You find yourself letting small kids hang out with you and try stitches while they wait in line to go to gym (awesome crowd control method when everyone is five years old and under). The only problem there is that you don't get the satisfaction of total corruption. There's only time, due to the sheer number of small people, for a quick dip into the pool of degenerate behavior.

So, you turn to other outlets. Namely, the kids of your friends.

It's great.

You talk them into making Nigel, the late night owl (another Kids Learn to Knit cutie) with a bribe of their very own kitty cat-headed needles and uber-bright variegated yarn.

You slyly offer to reteach some other friends' daughter how to knit,

then point out that bamboo needles work better with the yarn she has chosen. And after she drags her father to the local yarn shop to get the needles (where she and your own daughter, who's gone along to make sure dad doesn't duck out, also purchase several skeins of two color cottons) you score the ultimate in knitting corruption.

Nothing's better than a kid in a skeleton t-shirt picking up a skein. Absolutely. Nothing. And all because he had the audacity to say (after the girls were safely out of the house), "That doesn't look hard to do."

By the time the girls had returned, he had picked up enough speed with the needles to have finished the bookmark his sister had started and was experimenting with different ways to make knitting "more efficient." You realize you may have to email him Hardcore, from Knitty, just to keep him going.

But you don't have to do it all. Really. Because before you know it, they're knitting without you.

The corruption never ends. Just think of who could be next...

(you thought it was going to be a picture of you, Thing One, didn't you?)