Teacher and lifelong knitter Darlene Oliver of Fairmount School in Bangor was 10 years old and in the fifth grade when her aunt Uldene Winship taught her to knit. Last year, when Oliver started a weekly after-school knitting group for fourth- and fifth-graders at the school, she knew just the person to call on for help – her aunt, now 86 years old, who still knits. Not so long ago, Oliver said, her aunt designed and knit booties for a friend’s dog to wear outside in cold weather.

The school knitting group, the Knitwits, Oliver said, “is like a quilting bee of old” where the children socialize while producing something useful. “I got to know them on a completely different level,” she said. Her goal was to teach the children basic knitting skills such as casting on, increasing, decreasing and binding off.

The 10 children in the group focused their knitting on pets and decided to donate their work to the Bangor Humane Society.

They knit squares to be assembled into cat bedding and cat toys to keep the felines waiting to be adopted from getting bored. The children knit fish-shaped toys and triangles edged with fluttery fringe certain to catch a cat’s eye. Some of the fish were created by “team knitting” with one child knitting one side of the fish and another child knitting the second side.

It was the children’s idea to knit cat toys, Oliver said.

Recently the children paid a visit to the Bangor Humane Society to drop off their creations and to visit with the felines.

“The children get a lot of satisfaction out of knitting,” Oliver said. “It’s something they can excel at beyond academics and sports.”