Knit Wit Greenville man has sense of humor about knitting hobby

Harold “John” Bigelow, 83, not only knits, he doesn’t use patterns.

“Using a pattern is too much like doing what you’re told,” he said.

He knits slippers, sweaters, mittens, hats, ear warmers, stockings, three-piece baby sets – sweater, bonnet and booties – and dog sweaters for members of his family, including 12 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. He prefers Red Heart acrylic worsted yarn in bright basic colors – blue, red, yellow and green.

“John has boxes of knitting he’s done,” said his wife, Jan Rhenow, who is the minister at People’s United Methodist Church in Greenville Junction. One box holds mittens, one holds stockings, one holds hats, and so on. That way when a family member makes a request for an item, Bigelow knows just where to look. He said he knits 40-50 pairs of mittens every fall. It is safe to estimate, he said, that he has knit thousands of items since the 1950s when he learned to knit.

He double-knits the heels and toes of his stockings. His grandson, a fisherman who lives in Harrington, came up with the idea to double-knit the stocking toes.

Bigelow grew up in Harrington. After he graduated from high school, he had hoped to go to college to study agriculture, but the blueberry harvest was bad that year and college money wasn’t available. He went to Hawaii to work for the government and was there when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. He enlisted in the Navy in 1943 and served in the Pacific. At that time he had not yet learned how to knit. “But I knew one officer that told me he knit a pair of socks a day while he was in the Navy,” Bigelow said.

Bigelow returned to Harrington after the war, and it was there that he learned to knit.

“No one showed me how,” he said. “I just watched people doing it and I thought I could do it, too.” One of the people he watched knit was Hilda Hammond, a war bride from Germany. She knit the continental way, holding the yarn in her left hand, and that’s how Bigelow knits. “I call it the easy way [to knit],” he said, because it’s easier on fingers made less flexible by arthritis.

Bigelow worked for the Maine Transportation Department for 28 years.

“I was a pick-and-shovel man for the state highway,” Bigelow said.

In the evening after work, he liked to knit. His mother, grandmother and Aunt Lucy were knitters. “They always said Aunt Lucy knit so tight her stockings could stand up by themselves.” He said he heard a story about a Harrington woman who knit so fast she “had to keep a bucket of water handy to cool off her knitting needles.”

Bigelow’s knitting is based on what he sees, including pictures of knitted garments in magazines. If he sees something he likes, he can figure out how to knit it. He also has the ability to visualize what he wants and to invent a pattern of his own. First, he does the math. He takes measurements, factors in the gauge – the number of stitches per inch – and starts knitting. “Math isn’t hard for me,” he said. “I just do it and hope it comes out right.”

One of Bigelow’s designs is a sweater of many colors, which he knit from leftover yarn. On it he “embroidered,” using a crochet hook, a tic-tac-toe game, a smiley face, a no-smoking symbol, a road sign and a crescent moon and star to remind him of the evening his granddaughter told him to look up at the night sky.

“When people think of someone knitting they think of a woman with a cat in her lap,” said Rhenow, “but with John it’s a man with a dog in his lap.” The couple’s Yorkie-poodle mix dog, Sam, likes to keep Bigelow company as he knits. Bigelow knitted Sam a bright red sweater with cable stitch bands down the sides.

The couple also has a cockatoo for a pet. The cockatoo is prone to vocalize loudly. “I wish I could knit a muffler for that bird,” Bigelow said, laughing.

At one time he knitted for Methodist church fairs in four towns – Harrington, Bucksport, Greenville Junction and Shirley. These days, his creations are donated to People’s United Methodist Church in Greenville Junction.

Bigelow doesn’t sell what he knits for his own profit.

“That would make it too much like work,” he reflected.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153 and ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.