facilities are being celebrated today with a "Family Fun Day". There will be face painting, music, a bouncy castle, craft activities, tours of the new facilities, story telling, the French Conversation group, the Book Club groups and more. When the idea was first raised the library staff said, "And Cat has to bring the knitters and get the children to knit."
They won't knit of course but we are going and we are prepared to show them how it is done - and perhaps even help them knit a stitch.
I have obtained some cheap yarn from the local charity shop and straight needles - also from the charity shop. I have cast on a "sufficient number" of stitches and knitted a few rows of two scarves.
These will be the basis of two "knit a row and go" scarves. They are just long strips of knit/garter stitch that anyone who can knit can add to and that are later given to someone to give to charity. Given that everyone knits slightly differently I don't suppose they turn out too badly but nobody could call them beautiful. It is however an easy way to involve people.
The vast majority of children, perhaps people, cannot knit. Some children don't even know what knitting is. They have never seen anyone do it. If we can encourage any of them to actually do a stitch with help from one of the group that will be good.
We will be next to the French conversation group. I am wondering whether any of them will tell a child, "Je suis un tricoteur"? I am sure they will be encouraging young children to try a word or two of French.
I thought about all of this last night as I was packing things ready to take. We are extraordinarily fortunate that our local library is not being closed, that it has actually been expanded.
The new facilities are wonderful. They are open, light and airy. They will be used to their full capacity, indeed the range of activities can now be expanded.
I saw one of our neighbours in there during the week. She had her three year and her five month old baby in there. They were borrowing a pile of picture books.
"Isn't this marvellous!" she told me.
Yes. This is what children should be growing up with. They should see libraries as magical places and say, like the small boy told me, "This is the best place!"
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2 comments:
I taught two grandaughters how to knit when they were about eight. Cousins. One dutifully did it but was stuck when she returned home as neither parent could help. The other learnt in the morning and by evening she was on her back on my lounge with many inches of a scarf done and still knitting in that awkward position. A scarf for a large toy dog.
Lovely to hear of revamped library.
Where would we be without our libraries? I think they are part of the civic glue that holds us all together.
Big Sister Cat
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