In this memory, I am five years old. Recently, at kindergarten, my friends and I are into something called spool knitting. One day, our teacher taught us how to do it using a piece of empty milk package and disposable chopsticks. She gave us each a ball of yarn, showed us how to span the first layer along the chopsticks, then left us to continue at our own pace.
My yarn in brown. Every day, I sit with my friends and carefully pass my yarn around the four chopstick poles attached to the milk package cylinder. After a while, my hands learn the motion, and I can do it without thinking about my next move. I chat with my friends while knitting, and that is one of the most satisfactory things I can think of right now. At the end of each day, I look at the brown woolen cylinder getting longer under my milk package and celebrate the day’s progress.
I can make this into a muffler, my teacher told me. Once it is long enough, she will teach me how to close the ends and help me attach woolen pom-poms. I cannot wait for that day to come. As my brown woolen cylinder gets longer, my knitting pace also picks up. I even start knitting at home in the evening.
Then, one day, my teacher sees my knitting and tells me that mine is long enough to make it into a muffler. In front of my eager eyes, she closes the two ends of my brown woolen cylinder and attaches one blue pom-pom at each end.
“There we go,” she says, handing me my completed muffler. “You did a great job! Now you can wear your beautiful muffler!”
When it is time for me to go home, I run outside to find my mother and brother with my brand-new handknit brown muffler around my neck.
“Look!” I can barely control my excitement. “My muffler! I made it! It even has pom-poms!”
My mother says I have done a great job and that the muffler looks good on me. I am so happy that I jump around.
As soon as we get back home, however, I realize that I do not really like wearing a muffler in general. I toss it into my toy box among many other plush dolls. It is my brother who finds interest in the brown muffler. He starts wearing it at home, and it becomes an essential item for him whenever he pretends to go out for shopping mimicking our mother.