The Joy Of Knitting 

It’s Not Just For Your Great Aunt Anymore 

by Debra Lawless

            If you still think that knitting is something only your great, great aunt is doing, take a look around Chatham.

            In recent years knitting has come into vogue with girls and women of all ages. They say they find it relaxing, they enjoy making hand-made gifts, and they treasure the camaraderie they find with other knitters.

            Caitlin Doggart, 29, began knitting as a teenager with girls in her dormitory at Milton Academy. “I fell in love with it,” she recalls on a recent cold morning in Where the Sidewalk Ends Books and Gifts on Main Street, which she co-owns with her mother Joanne. “There’s just something really gratifying about making something.” 

Belen Doggart models a Fair Isle sweater made for her first Christmas by her mother, Caitlin. DEBRA LAWLESS PHOTO

           When Doggart was pregnant, she began knitting a red Fair Isle sweater for her baby’s first Christmas. “I wanted it to be perfect. I cried over it,” she says. Last Christmas her daughter Belen, then 10 months, did wear the sweater, a product of Doggart’s “blood, sweat and tears.”

            Last year, when she was a sophomore at Chatham High School, Melanie Clark took up knitting. She produced so many knit items that last fall she sold her knitting at a fundraiser. A popular series of books by Debbie Stoller called “Stitch ‘n Bitch” is aimed at this younger generation of knitters.

            In the 1950s knitting was popular in women’s college dormitories. Marilyn Brown of Chatham, who learned to knit in high school, continued to knit at Bates College in Maine.

            “I’ve come from a family of knitters,” Brown says. “My mother always knit.”

In her dormitory, Brown’s classmates knit and played cards in the smoking room. “It was very relaxing while waiting for dinner,” she says.

            One of Brown’s classmates was a compulsive knitter who “used to stand in the line outside the dining room knitting,” Brown recalls. When, 45 years later, Brown went to a reunion at that woman’s house, Brown wondered if the woman would still be knitting. When the woman welcomed her classmates she was, in fact, holding needles and yarn.

            And what treasures did these women knit in the 1950s?

            Argyle socks for their boyfriends. “They were quite the rage,” Brown recalls.

            “One of my best friend’s brothers was so cute, and of course he didn’t pay any attention to me,” recalls Babs Lidbeck of Chatham. Remedy? A hand-knitted pair of Argyles, of course. But even after he received the gift, the boy ignored Lidbeck.

            Later Lidbeck knitted socks for her husband, Folke.

            Lidbeck began knitting when her mother taught her, at about the age of 12. “I just took right to it,” she says. “It’s like second nature.”

            Two years ago Lidbeck and her friend Barbara Dunn created a knitter’s Christmas tree as a project for the Chatham Garden Club’s annual Festival of Trees. Decorating the tree were “little, itty bitty sweaters” that Lidbeck knit on toothpicks with baby yarn. Also hanging on the tree were miniature baskets with tiny balls of wool.

            Wendy Hammond, 30, manager of Pine Tree Nursery, began knitting about five years ago. “I was always kind of interested in it,” she says. She has been polishing her skills in classes at Adventures in Knitting on Main Street in Harwich Port, which bills itself as “Cape Cod’s oldest yarn shop.”

            “It’s just something I enjoy doing,” Hammond says. “It’s relaxing and it takes your mind off things.” Hammond is working on a sweater for herself, and the running joke at work was that she should wear it as the going away outfit after her wedding last September.

            Many women educated in the 1970s can't recall seeing anyone knitting. The feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s cast aside many traditional women’s activities, and perhaps knitting was lost in the shuffle. A few years ago when Doggart worked in publishing in New York City, she joined a Thursday lunchtime knitting group. The group was made up of women in their 20s and in their 50s. Missing were those in between.

            Sharon Hammersten, a librarian at the Eldredge Public Library who was in school in the 1970s, remembers learning to knit in a home economics class, and that was the end of it. To remedy this Hammersten has joined a new knitting group at the library. The club welcomes both experienced knitters and beginners. The group meets on the first Saturday of the month from 1 to 3 p.m. and the third Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m. No registration is required, all ages are welcome, and it is free.

            Hammersten is knitting a scarf.

            “I sit there for two hours even though I have a million things I should be doing,” Hammersten says. “I enjoy the camaraderie.”

            Doggart is planning a project called “Warm Up America,” an idea of author Debbie Macomber, who writes a series of knitting novels that began with “The Shop on Blossom Street.” A large group of knitters will each knit a seven-by-nine-inch block. The squares will then be sewn together into a blanket which will be donated to the Red Cross in Hyannis. The event is planned for Tuesday, March 25 at 3 p.m. at the bookstore. Knitters can bring materials; the bookstore also carries needles and yarn. Doggart will teach a basic stitch. Complimentary coffee will be served.

2/28/08