43
Youngster learns and passes on technique
Photo
Design It owner Jenifer Daigle (34) of Canfield and Cortney Prout (7) of Canfield talks about finger knitting and Design It in Canfield
By Elise Franco
A woman taught girls in a Russian orphanage to knit — after she was taught by her 7-year-old granddaughter.
While many girls are shopping with their moms for new clothes, Cortney Prout of Canfield is making her own.
Cortney, 7, a first-grader at C.H. Campbell Elementary, said she learned to sew and knit last year while taking classes at Design IT School of Style.
“My cousin’s friend came, and she did some really cool stuff,” she said. “It’s fun.”
The school, at 400 E. Main St., is run by Jenifer Daigle, 34, of Canfield. She said she opened the school last year because she wanted to give children like Cortney a place to create.
“It’s a fun, nonintimidating place you can come and learn to sew,” Daigle said. “It’s called a ‘School of Style’ because it’s not just about sitting down at a machine all day. We want them to have an intrinsic love of the craft.”
She said the school has about 30 students between ages 6 and 12 who attend class once per week.
“I like to keep the classes small,” Daigle said. “It’s more like a one-on-one approach.”
Cortney said she likes to sew — she’s made purses, bathing suit wraps and vamped up an old pair of jeans. One of her favorite skills is finger-knitting, which is done by wrapping yarn around her own fingers to make into a scarf or belt.
“It’s so easy. I did it in the car, and it took me like one minute,” she said, holding up a bright pink scarf that was wrapped around her neck.
Finger-knitting was so easy, in fact, that Cortney decided to teach some of her friends and family.
“My mom can’t really do it,” she said. “Dad tries. He actually watched football and did it before.”
Recently Cortney said she taught her grandmother, Kathy Raybuck, just before Raybuck visited a Russian orphanage.
“She asked me to teach her finger-knitting because she was going to Russia,” Cortney said. “It’s easy, but it kind of took a long time to teach.”
Raybuck, 64, of Poland, said she loved being able to learn something from her granddaughter.
“It took about an evening for me to learn how to do it,” she said. “Cortney is really something. I thought it was special that my granddaughter was teaching me something.”
After mastering the craft, Raybuck said she decided to pass her finger-knitting skills along to others during a volunteer mission trip led by the Rev. Kathryn Adams, Youngstown State University campus minister.
The orphanage Raybuck and 13 others traveled to in December was in Sobinka, a suburb of Vladimir, Russia.
“Words can’t even express what it was like seeing children in an orphanage,” she said. “It was something I’ll never forget. It was a wonderful experience.”
Raybuck said the orphanage housed about 20 girls ages 7 to 17. They may have been given up, she said, because they were unruly or unwanted.
She said the girls learned to knit necklaces, bracelets, headbands and scarves.
“The girls were very excited to be able to do see how something was done then do it themselves,” she said. “It seemed like they took the time to sit and settle down a bit and wanted to learn something.”
Daigle said she had no idea Cortney had passed her skills along until after Raybuck had returned from Russia.
“I didn’t know she taught them how to knit until her mom showed me pictures of the trip,” she said. “I was just so moved because you don’t expect a child to, one, teach an adult; and two, do something like this that will go touch the lives of those kids halfway around the world.”
Daigle said it’s fulfilling to teach a simple skill, such as finger-knitting, that Cortney was able to pass on to her grandmother who then taught a whole new group of girls.
“It was pretty amazing for me to pass along this craft that I love so much,” she said.
efranco@vindy.com