Scarf-mania

I have a ‘cute kid’ story - hold on, stay with me, there’s knitting involved too!
My 4 yr old grandson, Nathan, and I have a play-date every week or two. He loves ‘Bob the builder’ and we have a full collection of the ‘machines’ in tiny size - the best $7 presents I’ve ever bought, for the joy and time he’s spent with them. So, he comes to Grama’s and expects to spend a good while playing ‘Bob the builder’ - funny thing, though, I actually have to play Bob, hold him up and talk for him and Nathan acts out each of the ‘machines’.
Now, we are having one of the worst summers on record here in TBay, very cool and very wet. Also, around Grama’s house lately there is an over-abundance of scarves - you’ll see what I mean when you get No 46 (I’m assuming you remembered to renew). Getting back to Bob, Nathan announced that ‘we’ should make scarves for the machines because there was going to be a snowstorm.
Now, I’ll back up just a bit and tell you that in preparation for going to TNNA last month, I thought I’d do a little hand knitting to get in the mood, something I have not done since I found knitting machines. I actually had to go and buy a pair of needles, got one of those huge balls of cotton and I’d been knitting round dishcloths for the past while, the evidence laying on a table beside my favourite chair.
Nathan goes over and grabs the needles - ‘Are these your knitting sticks, Grama?’ Amused, I agreed. He then asked if there’s any more of that red wool left over from his new sweater, because red will look good on ‘Roley’(a green steamroller). I found the part cone and gave it to him. He flipped the ‘sticks’ back and forth a bit over the top of the cone and then said, ‘I’ve got a better idea, Grama. We should use one of your machines!’ So we went down to the LK150 - it has long been his favourite because I have the yarn swift at one end of the table and a manual cone winder at the other end and often let him wind some yarn off skeins for me. He loves to see the yarn swift whipping round as he turns the handle of the winder from four feet away. So, I let him cone off a small bit of the red yarn so we could use it doubled on the mid gauge - I thought I’d let him knit a short bit of slip cord, like the ‘knots of work’ and it would be a perfect scarf for a little machine. I did the ‘e’ wrap, got it started and showed him how to pass the carriage back and forth. By the 4th pass, he was pushing my hand away, ‘I can do it, Grama!’ About 6 inches later, I said, ‘Will that be good?’ ‘That’s perfect, Grama!’ I cast off and we went up to try it on Roley. Nathan insisted that we fix the ends up and then said, ‘Okay, Scoop needs a orange one!’ - Scoop is the yellow backhoe.

Six machines and scarves later, I was getting a little tired of the exercise. I learned long ago that Nathan is definitely not ‘attention-deficit’ but in fact much the opposite. So, in an attempt to divert him to something else, I said, ‘I think the snowstorm is over.’ He countered sadly like he couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized, ‘ It’s JUST pretend, Grama!’
Well, our play date was over, but he can now tie knots and bows quite well!