Third-grader Garrison Looke knit these children’s slippers last year as part of his weekly Handworks class taught by Kathie Burnett at The Bay School in Blue Hill.

Knitting Back in Style as Life Skill and Social Vehicle
“In through the front door, once around the back, peek through the window and off jumps Jack.”

First-grader Walter Lange gets some help with his knitting from eighth-grader Abe Noyes.

Kathie Burnett, who has taught various forms of handwork at the pre-K-eighth grade school for a quarter century, starts children knitting in first grade. She makes her pupils sets of needles from a wooden dowel. Each child sands down his or her pair and shapes the points in the pencil sharpener. As their first project, the first-graders knit a square, which they fashion into a cat. They also make a teddy bear and a case for their recorder that will accompany them through eighth grade.

This year, Burnett has seven first-graders. She and the 6-year-olds knit for about 45 minutes, including cleanup, every Wednesday morning.

“Six seems to be an OK age. They are ready,” she said. “I have seven first-graders and they are all knitting beautifully. We put our chairs in a circle and we knit and talk.”

As a Blue Hill resident, from time to time around her community, Burnett will comes across Bay School graduates whom she taught to knit years ago. She delights at the sight of these young mothers knitting baby clothes for their children. She has also taught countless boys including 1997 Bay School graduate Isaac Chittenden. She recently spotted the 20-something sporting the wool hat that he had knit in second-grade. He was wearing it like a beanie.

“All these years, I have been waiting for the first boy to tell me ‘I don’t want to knit’ but it hasn’t happened,” she proudly related.

The exact origin of knitting is not known. For ages, people have been doing some form of the needlework whether ankle-high socks discovered in Egyptian tombs to lobster trap heads in coastal Maine. In the British Isles, during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, North Sea fishermen wore handknit sweaters like badges to distinguish community. These snug, windproof garments boasted intricate stitch patterns, featuring different marine motifs such as ropes, ladders and herringbones, which identified individual fishing villages. The sweaters served a practical purpose. By his sweater pattern, a drowned fisherman could be identified and his body returned home for burial. Back then, all family members knit including the men who knitted socks and practiced other needle crafts on long sea voyages.

In the United States, knitting has a long history. Women knit on board the Mayflower and other ships bound for the New World. During World War I, Americans were called to knit wool socks, mufflers, wristlets and sweaters to warm U.S. soldiers. In Washington state alone, 6,000 residents contributed hundreds of thousands of knitted items for the war effort.

In the 1970s and 1980s, largely due to the feminist movement and that more women were pursuing professional careers, knitting and other traditional domestic arts fell from favor. Gradually, American women ceased being taught how to knit, crochet or operate a sewing machine.

Since the turn of the 21st century, though, handcrafts have been undergoing a huge comeback. The Home Sewing Association estimates there are 35 million sewing hobbyists in the United States. Sales of Singer sewing machines have doubled to 3 million since 1999. Actresses like Cameron Diaz have helped by making handworks hip to do. Sewing clubs have surfaced at high schools and on college campuses. Virtual knitting circles have mushroomed on the Web. Julia Roberts’ 2008 movie “The Friday Night Knitting Club,” about a single mother struggling to keep her Manhattan knitting store afloat, is only furthering the trend.

Before all the buzz, and during the time when handworks were uncool, Bay Schoolers have kept right on knitting never figuratively dropping a stitch. Creating with one’s hands is an integral part of the Blue Hill Waldorf school’s philosophy based on the teachings of Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner.

“The goal in Waldorf is to educate the hands, head and heart,” Kathie Burnett said.

Luckily, Burnett knew how to sew and was proficient at various needlecrafts when her daughter Milly started first grade at the Bay School 25 years ago. She volunteered in the class, teaching the first-graders to knit. One thing led to another. She has been at it ever since in a formal capacity. Handworks are an integral part of the K-eighth grade curriculum. By second grade, children are learning to purl and make their own hats. In fifth and sixth grade, they are using four needles and turning out mittens. In seventh and eighth grade, they knit on circular needles and create their own designs with color and pattern changes.

Held twice a week, the handworks classes meet for 45 minutes. Each class opens with a verse. In the first grade, children begin by saying, “May our hands complete our tasks with care. May our fingers work as friends together and we our laughter share.”

Originally from Lynn, Mass., Burnett learned to sew from her grandmother. At age 5, she remembers making a knitted hat with little bows for an infant cousin. Her acquired needle crafts became useful life skills, but she also treasured the time spent with her grandmother.

“She was very patient,” Burnett recalls. Her grandmother also made doll clothes. “I used to feel my dolls were the loveliest.”

Parents have recognized the value of handworks too, seeing children take pride in their creations.

“She [Kathie] holds them together and they come out with something wonderful,” Lisa Looke, mother of third-grader Garrison Looke, observed. “It’s a way of slowing down and creating something that is beautiful.”

Kathryn Dillon has four children, ranging from 8 to 16, all of whom have learned to knit under Burnett’s tutelage.

“We spend a lot of time imagining what we don’t want our children to do,” she reflected. “This is a lifelong skill. It’s like riding a bike. It’s one of those good habits that you want to instill.”

Dillon likes to knit too and be around others who do.

“It’s hard to explain how pleasant it is to be in the company of someone who knits,” she mused. “You sit a little longer. You talk a little longer.”