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Knitting enjoys renaissance
Associated Press
FILE PHOTO
Erik Heirman of Marshall, Michigan works on a pair of knit boxer shorts, proving that not just grannies knit, but celebs to high schoolers.
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They’re young. They’re hip. They knit.
On a Thursday night, the regulars--a group of Marshall High School students--filter in to the downtown yarn shop, In Sheep’s Clothing. Erin Skidmore labors on her green scarf.
Dave Scott starts a washcloth. Erik Heirman knits a pair of fuzzy pink boxer shorts.
“I like to have stuff that I make,” Skidmore said.
“It makes me feel good.”
“Everyone is always impressed by knitted stuff,” Scott added. Most of the group’s banter leaned toward cynical and sarcastic, but that seems to suit one of the shop’s owners, Chris Jensen, who keeps the teens in check during these Thursday night knitting parties.
They compare which of them has been to the most annoying concert, won unanimously by the girl who saw ‘N Sync perform with Britney Spears.
Joey Caron brought a brown wool hat he knitted and decided to tackle socks for his next project.
He settled on green and white, which Jensen added to his growing yarn tab.
She helped him translate the instructions, which are in German, on the store’s computer.
Cheryl Tobey has had a front row view to this group. She is the life management teacher at Marshall High School and was approached by about 15 students who wanted her to sponsor a club.
Tobey was delighted.
“Back in the early s, there was a big push in home economics to get away from cooking and sewing and needlework,” Tobey said.
"I’m not ashamed that I know how to knit and crochet and I’m a pretty smart lady," Tobey said.
"I have two master’s degrees.’’
But the knitter of yesterday can be a lot different in today’s world of sexy knitted tank tops and fuzzy scarves.
The knitter’s image has evolved in recent years to include Generation X, teens and Hollywood glamor girls such as Cameron Diaz and Sarah Jessica Parker.
A 2000 study by the Craft Yarn Council of America found that nearly one in three women knit or crochet, up nearly 10 percent since 1994. Knitters and crocheters 35 years and younger made up 57 percent of those to recently take up the craft.
The student group, which has nearly doubled since the beginning of the school year, has prompted Tobey to pick up some needles after several years of not working with yarn.
The mainstream knitters are not only teens or movie stars.
Even the lifers have moved from the yarn stores into the public’s domain.
More than a dozen women gathered at Battle Creek’s Barnes & Noble Booksellers last week to talk about knitting.
Five of the women were from the South Central Michigan Knitting Guild and its president, Deni Turner of Coldwater, said she didn’t know any of the others.
Carol Fisher, like most of the women gathered near the religion section of the bookstore, was not a member of the guild, but thought it would be fun to knit with other people.
Knitting as she talked, Fisher said learned to knit from her mother and aunt when she was a young teen, and is often the butt of jokes at her job, where she’s known as the “geek lady.”
Both Fisher and Turner have been knitting for years. Turner thinks it runs in streaks. But people who see themselves as “knitters” will always be around. Scott, one of the three teen founders of the school’s knitting club, is not a stranger to crafts.
He wore a robe necklace that held his keys and is making his own canoe. Knitting, too, seems to suit him.
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