When you think of a knitter do you picture a gray-haired granny sitting in her rocking chair with a cat in her lap and her needles clicking? Well, you couldn’t be more wrong and I can prove it. On Saturday, June 9th the Everett Public Library is hosting World Wide Knit In Public Day. The day was started in 2005 as a way for knitters to come together to enjoy each others company and to show the general public that knitting can be a community activity.
This year there are over 1,000 events around the world. Check the World Wide Knit in Public website to see where they’re being held. Participating countries include the U.S., Italy, Canada, Australia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Venezuela, South Africa, Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia and many more.
Joining a knitting group has become a great way to make new friendships with people sharing a common interest. Interestingly, the communal nature of knitting has become a popular theme in books recently.
The Shop On Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber has cancer survivor Lydia Hoffman opening a yarn store in Seattle to begin a new life. She offers a knitting class to improve business and three women join the class for very different reasons. Every week they discover more about each other and form a bond helping each other through the obstacles in their lives. The Blossom Street series has eight books. Each book includes a knitting pattern. The library also has The Best Of Knit Along With Debbie Macomber which includes projects inspired by the novels.
The Friday Night Knitting Club, Knit Two, and Knit The Season by Kate Jacobs spans a seven-year period in the lives of friends who met as regular customers at a yarn shop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They help each other recover from a tragedy that occurs in one of their lives. A knitter herself, Julia Roberts will be starring in the movie version of the first novel that is scheduled to come out in 2013.
The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood is about a mother who takes up knitting as a way to fill the empty hours of loneliness while coping with the loss of a child. She joins a knitting circle and is eventually comfortable enough to talk about her grief and find hope in life again.
The Beach Street Knitting Society And Yarn Club and Needles And Pearls by Gil McNeil feature Jo Mackenzie, a newly widowed British mother of two boys who decides to take over her grandmother’s wool shop.
Maggie Sefton writes a knitting mystery series that begins with Kelly Flynn coming back to Colorado for her aunt’s funeral. She suspects the death wasn’t an accident and with the help of the knitting regulars at her Aunt’s shop, the House Of Lambspun, she sets out to solve the murder.
The seaside knitters mystery series by Sally Goldenbaum begins with Isabel “Izzy” Chambers dumping the corporate life and opening a yarn shop in Sea Harbor, Massachusetts. When there is a murder in the apartment above the shop the Seaside Knitters take on the case.
Knitters come in all ages. Teen Knitting Club by Jennifer Wenger, Carol Abrams, and Maureen Lasher includes 35 patterns, a guide to selecting yarn and accessories, and advice on starting your own knitting club.
Chicks With Sticks : It’s A Purl Thing and Chicks With Sticks : Knit Two Together by Elizabeth Lenhard are young adult novels available as downloadable audio ebooks. Four teenage girls from different high school cliques become friends after forming a knitting club.
Knitting For Peace by Betty Christiansen includes everything you need to know to start a knitting -for-charity group. Read about 28 charities and knit the patterns for each of them.
June 9th is also the second annual Yarn Bombing Day. Yarn Bombing by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain is a guidebook to the covert world of textile street art. It’s a fascinating look at an international movement of graffiti knitting.
The Snohomish Knitters Guild (“Home to all fearless knitters in Snohomish County Washington”) is a terrific group to join if you are looking for others to knit with. They have monthly meetings with KnitLab for help with a project, speakers on various topics, and a show and tell of knit projects. The Guild encourages members to find new friends at smaller, less formal knitting groups. They provide the means to find these groups through their website, online newsletter, Facebook and Ravelry Group.
So grab your knitting needles and yarn and come to the library on June 9th. Be sure to stop by the Children’s Room display case to see the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Humpty Dumpty scenes made by the Library Knitters.
Be sure to visit A Reading Life for more reviews and news of all things happening at the Everett Public Library
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