Teaching North Neighbor Kiddo to knit

So, North Neighbor's kid comes over a few times a week, ostensibly to help with her homework, although she prefers to play boardgames. This is supposed to, on my side, limit the amount of unscheduled time she wants to come over to our house by imposing structure on it, and in theory, improve her life, by letting her be exposed to another version of normal, that is, different from the normal life at her household.

North Kiddo hints a lot, which is something I hate, as my mother squelched that habit out of us at a very young age. "Ask or ask not. There is no hint," to paraphrase the Yoda.

Earlier in the year she hinted that I could teach her to knit. I let that comment sail on past, but I did begin collecting knitting supplies and stuff for her birthday in August. I bought a this book & kit from those great folks at Klutz. I acquired a cute kid-sized tote bag, pink & brown, very chic. I bought a little zippered bag at Goodwill. I bought some cheap notions or pulled extras from my knitting bag. I put in some of the free yarn that I won from the Naked Sheep Knit Shop (look, fall class schedules, yippee!).

And I dropped it off around her birthday. She turned nine.

She plans on coming over tonight and we may begin the learning knitting process. I'm scared to death!

She has average to above-average intelligence. She has average to low-average attention span. She loves pink. A pretty normal kid, whatever normal means.

The Klutz kit comes with nice denim blue skeins of yarn (without laundering or content labels-how annoying), which I must make into balls for her. This may involve using the swift which came from her household for a ridiculously low amount of compensation. Yes, I feel guilty.

Math is a challenge for her, when it's math on paper. The knitting may be good for her and her math, since, when we knitters want to create just the right thing, we will do the math required to make our knitting projects come out just so, even though we might not sit down and do a worksheet just for fun. She's a great reader.

I may start out by casting on for her and doing some practice garter stitch pot holders. Or maybe we'll use the free pink yarn and start a practice garter stitch scarf she could wear this winter. Maybe I'll let her be inspired by leafing through the Knit Stitch book.

Gosh, I hope this goes well and that neither of us gets frustrated & gives up.