After school every Friday, 11-year-old Deborah Siffra slips on her backpack and heads off to the Mattapan Branch Library. Inside, she passes by kids hunched over their homework, surfing the Internet, and catching up on their reading.
She stakes out a table in a corner of the cramped children's section, then takes the knitting needles from a basket at the librarian's desk - each pair marked with a name.
Always the first to arrive, Siffra is soon joined by the six other kids who make up the library's weekly knitting circle. They're all knitting scarves, using chunky needles and colorful yarn of bold green, hot red, and pink.
As their needles softly click, they shoot the breeze, talk about stress in their lives, and focus on a craft they say is dually challenging and relaxing.
They say the whole notion that knitting is for gray-haired grannies passing time in their rocking chairs is soooo old.
"We are not old," said Deborah, laughing, when asked about the age factor recently. "The people that say knitting is for old people say it because they've never tried it."
And knitting isn't just for girls either. The sole boy in the Kids Knit club in Mattapan shrugs off the gender issue as well.
"If my friends were here, trust me . . . " said Shawn Fisher, a 10-year-old fourth-grader from Mattapan, trailing off as the girls laughed. "Knitting is basically for g-u-r-l-s," he said, elongating the vowel. "But I just find it interesting. . . . Boys think it's for girls, but it's for everyone."
Aldrich Robinson, who opened her Back Bay store, Newbury Yarns, in 2004, thinks young Hollywood stars have made knitting popular.
"All of a sudden it's cool to knit," she said. "It's not a grandma hobby anymore. "
In his 2007 book "Microtrends," pollster Mark J. Penn notes that knitting is fast becoming a favorite pastime among the young, with teens and 20-somethings leading the way. "Practically overnight, knitting has gone from frumpy to chic," writes Penn, who studies small cultural forces that eventually have a big impact on business, politics, even our personal lives. (Penn is now one of Hillary Clinton's top presidential campaign advisers.)
Young people are drawn to knitting because it gives them a break from 24/7 connectedness, according to Penn. They are searching for more communal ways to connect and for more calming distractions.
According to Penn, 6 million junior high and high schoolers in America - inspired by Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, and Sarah Jessica Parker - have taken up knitting. There are knitting blogs and do-it-yourselves TV shows, books and magazines catering to the craft.
Knitting groups have popped up on MySpace, Penn writes, and between 2004 and 2005 alone, purchases of fashion yarn - popular with younger knitters - rose 56 percent.
In this area, schools are getting in on the action. At Shady Hill, an independent coeducational day school in Cambridge, knitting is part of the fourth-grade curriculum. By Thanksgiving every year, says the school's website, each fourth-grader is expected to have learned how to knit, change colors, create patterns - and to have a knitted hat to show for it.
"This has been going on for the past several years that knitting has seen a resurgence, and a large part of that has been young people - college students, high school students, even elementary school students," said Susan Baker, owner of Windsor Button in Boston.
A good portion of her store's sales comes from college and high school students, Baker said. Parents often stop in to buy supplies for their younger children.
Allison Nevitt, owner of Circles Knitting Salon in Roslindale, has noticed a shift in her customer demographic too. "I definitely see a bunch of enthusiastic young people here," said Nevitt, who teaches knitting at her store and has taught at area middle and elementary schools.
Robinson, the Newbury Yarns owner, said younger people are stopping by her store looking for bulkier yarn and bigger needles.
"A mother was in the store last week buying yarn for her 7-year-old daughter, and I asked her, 'Are you going to teach her to knit?' " Robinson said. "She said, 'No, she's going to teach me.' "
Ann Langone, children's librarian at the Mattapan Branch Library, said she started the club last summer after some of the children showed interest in a scarf she was knitting for a library fund-raiser.
She purchased needles for seven children. Now the club has 14 on a waiting list, and inquiries - even from adults - keep pouring in.
"It's amazingly popular. Who knew?" Langone said. "The ones who know what they are doing show the others. They gossip. It's like quilting bee."
The Kids Knit members, whose ages range from 9 to 13, say they like knitting because it's a complicated and fun hobby to learn, and it keeps them busy.
Eleven-year-old Naphtalie Orelus of Mattapan said she was among the first to join.. "We have six girls and one boy," she said. "There would have been two, but one boy got frustrated."
Kaina Siffra, 13, learned about the group after seeing her sister, Deborah, knitting. She also gets tips from Deborah and Langone, who is teaching the group a basic knitting pattern called the garter stitch.
"Miss Ann told me how to hold my hand and where to put my yarn ball. . . . It's supposed to be on your left side," Kaina said. "You need to be careful because if you go too fast you might drop a stitch. . . . The more you do it, the better it gets."
So every Friday, they meet and knit. They talk about their grades, bad days, how their principal "yelled at them for no reason." Sometimes they just joke around.
"Sometimes when you have stress, you knit," said Kimberly Petion, 10, of Mattapan. "And it just goes away."
Meghan Irons can be reached at mirons@globe.com.
Kids Knit
Mattapan Branch Library
10 Hazelton St.,
Mattapan
617-298-9218
Knit & Needlepoint by Mary Jo Cole
11 Newbury St., Back Bay
617-536-9338
Circles Knitting Salon
56 Murray Hill Road,
Roslindale
617-524-5500
The Knittin' Kitten
93 Blanchard Road,
Cambridge
617-491-4670
Mind's Eye Yarns
22 White St.,
Cambridge
617-354-7253
