Readers who stitch and tell

One of the pleasures of writing this column is that I get to hear stories about stitching. Everyone has one, it seems, and that comes as no surprise to me. Blessed be the tie that binds, no matter what your needlework persuasion.

Connie Bryce, a teenager who summers on Great Wass Island, told me recently she was knitting a hat in the brightest colors she could find, including purple, orange, electric blue and “something spotted.”

“Who are you knitting it for?” I asked.

“Anyone brave enough to wear it,” she said. The school she attends in Cambridge, Mass., has a knitting club.

“The older kids,” she said, “teach the ones in the elementary grades. The little ones knit small squares they sew into afghans, which they send to Afghanistan to people who need them.”

Barb Mower of St. Albans told me about her childhood knitting.

“We knit Barbie Doll couches when we were about 9 years old,” she said. “They were these funny-looking squares we made and rolled up to look like a piece of furniture. We used earring boxes for coffee and end tables.” She said she hasn’t knit much since then, but is thinking about taking it up again.

David Dinsmore of Bangor said he took up knitting when he worked the late night shift at a telephone switchboard when the phones didn’t ring much.

“But I knit upside down,” he said. Which doesn’t mean he knits standing on his head. He holds his knitting in such a way that it doesn’t drop down from the needles, but grows upward instead. He wasn’t kidding. Apparently, it’s all in the way he holds the needles.

Meg Haskell of Orono said her mother was such a splendid seamstress that when her favorite dress wore out, she took it apart, used it for a pattern and made another.

“Then,” she said, “I took that one apart and made a dress like it for myself.”

Abby Weeks of Bangor said many students, both male and female, at Carleton College in Wisconsin, where she is a student, have taken up knitting.

When asked why she thought so many young people were attracted to knitting, she said, “We refer to it as ‘constructive fidgeting.’ It’s a way to fidget and do something useful at the same time.” She is learning to crochet, but has not yet learned to knit.

“A ton of people knit and crochet at Carleton,” she said. “There is an official club, but even more independents who just like to knit. Everyone teaches everyone else. They take their knitting everywhere – to fill time before movies and concerts. Some try to get away with knitting during big lectures – to stay focused and awake. There was a folk concert that was advertised as a ‘Designated Knitting to Forget About Finals Opportunity.'”

These stories and those who tell them are for me the warp and weft that create community. We knit, we stitch, we crochet; therefore we are connected as human beings.

Snippets

Animal rehabilitator James Costelloe of Hampden, who was a subject of a By Hand column about recycling old fur coats, extends thanks to those who donated fur coats for his work with animals.

Penobscot Theatre Company is seeking donations of fabrics and sewing notions for costumes for the Maine Shakespeare Festival. Needed are pieces of satin, velvet, brocade, damask, rough weaves and fur. For more information, call the costume shop at 942-3333.

The Ships Project, which makes handmade slippers and hats for U.S. troops, has sent 47,020 items.