I've Failed to Indoctrinate my Daughter

I wear a lot of hats, but the hat that I have loved the most and put the most effort into for the last fourteen plus years has been my "mother" hat. I've always loved books, and I wanted to share that love with my children, so I READ to them constantly practically from the moment they came home from the hospital. Even when they were old enough to read on their own, we would still have a book that we were reading together at night or on long trips. I never considered it a chore, and they seemed to love everything I read to them. I initially had the goal of reading all of the Newberry Award winners with them until I discovered that a significant number of the more recent ones were crap. Of course, we covered all of my childhood favorites: The Little House of the Prairie Series, The Betsy-Tacy Series, Eleanor's Estes's books, and Elizabeth Enright's books, just to name a few. I remember driving to Yosemite one year and reading Rascal during the entire four-hour trip up there and finishing on the way home. When we drove to Yosemite last spring, my kids were reminiscing about how they had loved that book and that WE should read it again. Reading has been a huge part of our family, and my kids love a good story; however until recently my daughter didn't read on her own much. (Recently, she says that she and her friends are becoming "book nerds" and she doesn't go anywhere without a book.) My son is equally capable, but he still doesn't read as much as I would like. I could never understand how two kids with parents who love reading and who had such fun listening to stories all of their lives wouldn't want to read for themselves more. I mean these kids would complain when we'd make a quick stop at Barnes and Noble! I always laugh when I read the experts' lists on how to raise a reader; guess what, experts, you don't know as much as you think you do. I'm kind of kidding because my kids have always loved learning and have done well in school: I just thought that they would be...well, bookworms.
ANYWAY, this intro brings me to to my real subject of the day: knitting. My daughter learned to knit when she was five, and she has knit ONE hat since then. She's never been interested in it. Maybe I should have said, "No, no, you cannot learn to knit. Mommy doesn't want you to knit." With her personality, that might have gotten her interested then. She's just not interested in sitting still much. BUT today, we went shopping, and I wanted to stop at my LYS. Since we were also planning to do a little clothes shopping, Paige was in a compliant mood. We passed by a maroon and gold scarf in one of the aisles, and Paige exclaimed, "That's a Harry Potter scarf!" Paige loves the Harry Potter series, so incredibly she said that she thought that she'd like to knit it, then we saw that the pattern included the other "schools." She chose the Ravenclaw pattern because they're "honest and smart." I'm very excited about the prospect of having a knitting daughter. I don't think that I will share with Russ that I bought 5 skeins of Karabella Aurora 8 for $8.95 a skein to make the scarf...so I, in essence, just bought a fourteen year old a $50.00 scarf. Ugh, when I say it that way...maybe I'm placing a bit too much importance on the whole knitting thing. Nah!! I really do think that it was worth it....but maybe next time we'll look at a little cheaper yarn.