Knitted together: Old-fashioned craft is now a fun activity for entire family

Genevieve Arterburn, 9, is knitting. She carefully slides the tip of the big knitting needle through a stitch on her other needle. She wraps the yarn around the needle's tip, uses that tip to draw the yarn through the stitch, then pulls gently on the yarn to make it snug as she slips it off one needle onto the other.

Genevieve concentrates on her work, but her fingers move quickly. After all, she has already made a scarf and a hat, and now she is working on another scarf.

Genevieve is knitting a colorful scarf. But she is also knitting a bond with her mother, who sits by her side working on a project of her own: socks. Terri Arterburn has finished one sock for Genevieve and is working on another. She, too, is knitting that bond.

"It's fun to have something we can do together," Terri says. "We're hopelessly hooked."

That's what this parent-and-child knitting class is all about, says Kamille Bauer, who teaches it at her knitting shop, Kamille's, at Gardner Village.

What's been especially fun about the class, she says, is that "we started out as a mother-daughter class, but then we found that boys wanted to knit, too."

Camden Seeborg, 10, is one of those boys. "He's the one who got us into it," says his mother, Lisa, who is taking the class with Camden, Dylan, 6, and Camden's friend, Caleb Shuler, 9.

It's been great, she says. "They want to knit in the car. It's not X-box; it's not TV; it's 'Mom, where is my knitting?' It's just fun." And it's been surprisingly easy for them all to pick it up, she says.

"I had never knitted before," she says. When Camden first expressed an interest in knitting, she got a book, "but we couldn't learn from that. It looked too complicated. But Kamille is so patient with the kids, they picked it right up."

Finding the class was a bit of serendipity, Camden explains. "I was a fan of knitting. But one day we came to Gardner Village, and it was very cold. I came inside this store just to get warm, and I saw the sign about the classes, so I asked my mom if we could sign up. It's been amazing. I learned to knit in one day."

In fact, Camden has finished his own scarf and is now working on a soft, pink one for his 4-year-old sister, Chloe.

"I wanted to learn to knit," he says, "because it makes you feel more productive in your life. It makes you feel good to make something. It makes you feel good when you make something for others or to donate to a shelter. Overall, it just makes you feel good inside."