Knitting Night. With small children at home and a house that constantly presented chores to be done, I lived for the escape that a night with friends provided. Ruth's first knitting lesson grew into a semi-regular evening meeting to chat, learn, and create. I don't know when it happened, but eventually those small gatherings grew into larger "knitting optional" mini-parties. We cooked for each other, listened to each other, prayed for each other. Our gatherings, more often than not, would last until the next day. We just couldn't stand the thought of this time together ending, and so we would sacrifice sleep to make it last that much longer. We didn't care that the next day would be a bleary-eyed mess of juggling kids and responsibilities, we needed this.
And knitting was the center of it all. That is not to say that we always knit, or even that everyone there could knit, but it was the catalyst for the whole thing and somehow was always present. There were evenings (especially around the holidays) where all of us would be covered in yarn, furiously stitching all the gifts we needed to finish for friends and family. There were evenings where only one of us would be holding needles, working a baby blanket over her growing belly. There were summer nights where the heat made the thought of knitting seem like torture, and so our projects would sit untouched in our bags while we sat on the patio and sipped cold drinks and ate chocolate. No matter the volume of knitting being accomplished, the gathering was always called "knitting night."
My knitting friend Sissi (who doesn't like to knit, but is called a knitter because she was at the core of most of these gatherings) recently moved back to Sweden with her family after being here in Ohio for over four years. Among the gifts we gave her at her farewell party was a little patchwork of squares knit by each of the us knitters. I was charged with crocheting them all together, and as I did I was struck by the idea that these friends, who knit together, were knit together as friends through all those knitting nights, and were now literally being knit together. The blanket was mismatched and full of mistakes, but absolutely beautiful when complete. Just like us.
I am built to require a creative outlet for my sanity, and right now knitting is that for me. But the reason I love knitting, the reason I feel like it is a part of me moreso than drawing or painting or cooking or any of the other things I "enjoy" is not because I am making something, but because I feel like knitting was another friend at the party. Every time I knit, a little piece of me is back at the party and is filled with joy.
