I love it when my friends travel. They always bring me the neatest stuff. Last spring, my friend Susan spent nearly a month in Auckland, New Zealand, visiting her daughter. When she returned she handed me a bag of yarn and a sweater pattern. It wasn’t just any yarn. It’s yarn made from a blend of the fur of two fiber-producing animals New Zealand has in abundance – possums and Merino sheep. The yarn is soft as a breeze and the color of mulled wine. Just looking at it makes me think of sweater days already creeping toward us.

She also brought me the March 15 edition of Viva magazine, the lifestyle section of the New Zealand Herald newspaper. The cover story by reporter Kristen MacFarlane was about stitch groups in Auckland. The groups meet in one another’s homes to work on whatever craft interests them. One woman was finishing a quilt her deceased mother left behind. Another was mending a cardigan. Many of the group members, MacFarlane writes, are of “a generation who missed learning [needlework] skills.” Those young women “who may once have ridiculed traditional domestic skills are now reclaiming them, with enormous pride.”

I really loved reading that article. Now I know that if any Maine stitchers decide to relocate to New Zealand, they’ll fit right in. All they have to do is bring along knitting, crocheting or embroidery. It’s nice to know that women worldwide sitting down together to sew and talk about life is an enduring tradition.

These days, women everywhere and all ages, some into their 60s and 70s, work at demanding jobs that often carry many responsibilities – one of the New Zealand women in the group is a corporate lawyer, another is a television director and yet another is an interior designer. Similarly, my stitch group includes a dietitian, a physical therapist and a librarian. Some of us oversee the care of elderly parents. Several of the fortysomethings in our group are mothers of small children. Several others are just beginning to adjust to empty nests. Some of us are active participants in the lives of grandchildren, or volunteer in our communities.

Much of what women like us create in the workplace is cerebral and intangible. We can’t really touch what we have accomplished. So when we sit down to string a pile of beads into a pretty necklace, mend a ripped seam or pull a silk thread through a piece of cream-colored linen, we are creating things with our hands that speak to us of permanence. We can touch it, look at it, give it away, sell it or keep it for ourselves. It is concrete evidence that we have accomplished something, learned a new skill and communed with the artistic part of ourselves.

Stitch groups often form out of very little. It might be as simple as having a lunchtime conversation at work and discovering that she, too, knits. The two women arrange a time and place to stitch together. Or it might be as complex as asking around to find out who among your acquaintances knits, crochets or embroiders, then writing invitations to those women. It might be as informal as meeting at a cafe for an hour to stitch and talk, or it may be as formal as joining a guild – complete with bylaws and member handbook.

With so much structure in our lives, we as women find it pleasant to assemble at a stitch group requiring nothing more of us than to appear. Within the group we are free to talk and to share what we know without thinking about the next rung of the corporate ladder. We can produce the work of our hands at our own leisurely pace.

In the process, we create something beautiful, and-or useful, rediscover the tranquility a slower pace brings to our lives and enjoy the pleasure of being with women who share similar interests. We grow as we stitch and we do so without causing any great stir.

New Zealander, American, European, Asian, African … the sisterhood of the stitch … common ground for female humanity.

Snippets

Jane, a reader who loves knitting dishcloths, e-mailed that this Web site will be of interest to those who also enjoy making dishcloths: http://groups.yahoo .com/group/monthlydishcloths/

Another fun Web site, the Whoduknit blog, she wrote, allows members to decide which mystery novel they want to read, then they design a knitting project that relates in some way to the book. Visit http://whoduknit.blogspot.com to find out more. Or visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WhoDuKnit/.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.