As part of my technology-free Saturday I did some finger knitting with H (aged almost three and a half) – and considering she’s quite a patient little girl I was amazed how quickly she picked it up (as you do need to be really patient!). Currently we have two bracelets, and she has a sense of achieving something “a bit like mummy”. She needed help but knew what to do once we’d done it a few times.

Finger knitting is new to me; I’ve knitted since I was young, though only followed my first pattern late last year. It follows the same principle as a knitting doll bobbin.

Hold the wool with the thumb of the hand you’re going to be knitting on and wind the wool around each finger alternately until you’ve looped them over each finger two times – remember to keep hold of the end your thumb is holding!

Then all you do is pull the lower loop over the upper one. Start again winding the wool around each finger until you have two loops on each finger, and keep going, making sure you start from the same finger each time you pull the lower loop over the upper (we started from the little finger). Eventually it’ll look like this :

At some point you’ll want to cast off. Cut your wool but leave a good length on it, and thread the end through the wool on each finger. Remove the wool from the fingers and pull tight – and voila – you’ll have something which looks a bit like a large knitted bracelet!

The best thing about this is the lack of mess, and it’s something you can do quickly and easily – and you don’t need a whole ball of wool either. I picked up a knitting doll bobbin from Tiger for £3 recently so think we may make a start on that with H, see how we get on…