My kid has always laughed at me whenever I get out the needles and string. He says it's dumb.
He also complains when he thinks I'm doing nothing but knitting. "How come I can't watch what I want on TV? You're only knitting. You're not watching it..." Um... pretty hard not to just answer with the standard parent answer.."I'm the adult. I can do what I want." The kid questions everything.
E V E R Y T H I N G.
So why was I surprised when he started asking about knitting needles and yarn? He's been around them practically his entire life but why now?
"Why does the needle go into the yarn like that? Why do you like yarn so much? Why do you knit all the time? Why? Why? Why? "
In order to de-stress (hahahahaha) I stopped at a local knitting shop a couple of weeks ago... just to look of course! AND of course I had the kid along. Sigh.
Boy Wonder plunked himself down on the sofa positioned right in a ray of sunshine and lounged. Loved it. Loved the sofa too, but he loved how the yarn sparkled in the sunshine. I could tell. He kept asking me .......... why? Why does this yarn look so nice up next to this one? Why is this stuff thinner than that one? Why is there so much yarn in here? What's this for? What's that for.... on and on and on..... until......... nope! Nobody got annoyed or even irritated.
Mr. M - the dude working in the shop that day, started talking back to Boy just like he was any other customer. Pretty soon I noticed (of course I was taking my time... someone else was entertaining my kid!) that my kid was trying to convince Dude that I (yep Me!) can work the shop so he (Dude) can teach Boy to knit. "It's okay. My Mom can work the store while you teach me. Yep. She can." LOL
Well... I couldn't of course (could you imagine? I would still end up owing them money!) We left without scheduling because I totally thought the sudden interest in 'stupid ol' knitting' was just for that day. Um... yeah....
A couple of weeks later and the kid is still asking me about knitting. "When you gonna teach me Mom?" "Is today the day I get my knitting lesson?" Yeah...
Let me explain something here... he's a normal child. Doesn't listen to me except when he wants to. Doesn't clean his room. Doesn't do whatever I ask him to do without a hassle. Knitting lessons? From me? Yeah right. Keep on dreaming kid. No way I'm paying money to teach you something I know how to do and could teach you if I wanted to and it would be a total stretch of my patience to try and teach you myself....maybe when you're older.
Another week goes by.....
Mom.... Mom.... can I learn how to knit today? Please?
Note here: his room was clean. Homework was done - all WITHOUT a hassle. Wow. Really?
I gave him some yarn and some needles and tried. I really tried. His little hands wouldn't do what I wanted them to do and rather than yelling and stressing both of us out............ I CALLED MR. M!!
I splurged. I spent my yarn money... boy was that hard!!!
BUT... when he sat in the shop with Mr. M for over an hour, knitting away and smiling it was sooooooo worth it!!
Mr. M taught him a different cast on than what I use (long-tail) so at the very end I asked to be shown so I could help out the kid if he got stuck. Guess who taught me how to do it? Not Mr. M!! Boyo muscled his way right over and showed me (very patiently I must add) just how to do it!!
He's been knitting for a few minutes every day now! He knits before school instead of cartoons! Yay!! It's so nice to see him sitting and doing something with his hands that doesn't involve a whole lot of noise and wiggling! I'm not pushing him (that's hard too!) and I'm just letting him choose when he wants to do it! Maybe he'll keep this up?!!
I like how the ribbing meets together at the top. It's a super simple pattern which knits up really fast! The ribbing is a little awkward at first - only because I've been knitting up baby hats with a 2x2 rib!! This one is k4, p1, k2 (3,4,5,6), p1 around.... which if you aren't paying attention.... now who would do that? Hm mm? Anyway... you can see where it may lead you astray! 
I used the knitted cast on and although I'm not exactly ecstatic about that little bit of a rolled edge... the Kid loves it! I am pretty happy with how this hat turned out overall! For the decreases the pattern says to use a p2tog-tbl which means to purl two together through the back loop.... say what? Every time I did it that way I ended up with an extra loop like a yarn over so I'm pretty sure I did it wrong! I ended up just purling 2 together the regular way and I think it looks great! 
