I cracked up when I saw this knit tie pattern on The Purl Bee this morning.

You might remember that my 7-year-old nephew, Simon, became obsessed with learning to knit while he was here for the holidays. There wasn’t much time to practice, and he found it harder to manage the needles than he had imagined, but still I sent him home with a Ziploc bag packed with some shocking green yarn (from the Christmas tree pompom fest) and two pairs of needles. On one of them, I’d cast on a couple dozen stitches and knit a few rows, so that if he ever did want to pick it back up, there’d be a place for him to start. And I told his parents about knittinghelp.com, just in case.

Shortly after they got back to Florida, I got this email from my sister:

Tonight when we went over to play with friends, Daryn asked Simon what the highlight was of his trip. He replied that it was learning how to knit. Evan [also 7] immediately started teasing him, saying he was a granny. Didn’t seem to bother Simon and eventually Evan was asking Simon to knit him a tie.

A couple of days later, they took their boat out with another family along, and Simon took his knitting. The mother-friend, Jenny, thankfully knows how to knit. So at one point Simon reportedly pulled out his needles and yarn to get started, with Jenny ready to assist. She took a look at it and said, “What is it?” And Simon replied, “A tie for Evan.”

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