To knit is a hit

Let's just say it from the top: Boys can learn to knit - and learn to love it, too. At least that's what fourth-graders at Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mass., have been learning for the past eight years.

Judith Austen, their art teacher, says knitting can be an easy and rewarding project for girls and boys of any age. Not only is it fun to make wearable art, but knitting can also be shared with family, friends, and even the community.

Every child makes a hat. Scott Mendelssohn has almost finished his. For Scott, knitting is a challenge of skill, dexterity, and speed. "I've dropped at least five minutes off my time for knitting a row," he says holding up a hat packed with geometric designs. Completing a row took him 20 minutes at first. Now, if he really concentrates, he can finish one in less than 15 minutes.

Justin Conway thinks his next project will be a sweater for his little sister. He says knitting is a good project for when you are stuck in bed, or "for rainy days when we can't go outside."

But is it cool for boys to knit?

"Yeah! It's awesome!" yells Dylan Ackers from across the classroom. Dylan leans on his elbows over a piece of graph paper, figuring out a new frog-pattern hat. He's already finished an impressive penguin-pattern hat he designed himself.

Men were probably the first ones to knit, in fact. Historians think that knitting was invented by fishermen. Knitting probably evolved from a technique for making fishing nets! It's simply tying knots in a string using two sticks. There is still debate about exactly where and when knitting got its start. By the 1600s, though, knitting was well-established in Europe. Spain, Italy, and Scotland have long knitting histories. (The Scots say they invented knitting - and introduced it to France.)

Early knitted garments were thick wool sweaters designed to protect fishermen from the wind, rain, and spray from the sea. Fishermen in different regions developed unique patterns. Early sailors could probably tell where a stranger lived just by looking at the pattern of his sweater - or mittens.

By the late 1700s and early 1800s, knitting machines had been invented. Because today's computer-controlled knitting machines are so fast at turning out hats, sweaters, scarves, and mittens, knitting by hand is just a hobby for most. But it's fun. And you can knit almost anywhere. (Even while wearing all your ice-hockey gear on your way to a practice, as some of Ms. Austen's young students have proved.)

Austen didn't learn to knit until she was an adult, but then she fell in love with knitting. It wasn't long before she was offering knitting, spinning, and wool-dyeing as art electives. Students had so much fun that she decided to try teaching the entire fourth grade to knit. That was eight years ago.

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