BREMERTON — At the back of Sweet Stitch, an East Bremerton yarn shop, the knitters sat at a maple kitchen table. Tana Schott eyed it nervously.
Trained only in the art of crocheting, the Bremerton resident had been rebuffed before by knitters at Kitsap stores.
“They said, ‘Oh, you crochet,’ as if it were some lower form of fiber art.” Schott said. “I didn’t know there were tiers.”
The yarn excursions were one of Schott’s first forays from her couch, where she had been laying the past few months. Two years of managing an Express Espresso meant 4 a.m. call times, few breaks and an intense pace. All of that ground her down. At night, she had panic attacks. Exhausted, she quit last fall.
But since work had been her only social outlet, she knew she eventually had to get up, get out and make some friends.
She sat down at the table. Schott didn’t know it yet, but she had just joined a circle of knitters that had bonded at Sweet Stitch’s kitchen table, and would soon outlive the store.
“Julie’s store wasn’t just a store, it was a family,” said Caryn Ackerman, who taught classes at the shop. “You didn’t just go in, buy a ball of yarn and walk away.”
Ackerman led a Wednesday group that usually filled up with older knitters talking about menopause, aging parents and children leaving home. The group enjoyed teasing the store’s young owner, Julie Sweet: “Now you’ll know what to expect!”
Knitters get intimate with their yarn shops. They have their favorites, and not-so-favorites, and like to compare stores.
There are several good yarn stores in Kitsap, with Churchmouse Yarns &Teas in Bainbridge Island being one of the friendliest, knitters said. But when Sweet Stitch opened on Wheaton Way in 2004, for many it became home.
The group that grew up around the shop exemplifies the new wave of knitters. They get patterns online, blog about their projects, knit in public and are younger than you might assume.
The new knitters have especially grown since Sept. 11, several knitters said.
“When this country is highly distressed, people start knitting,” said Susan Strawn, a knitting historian.
With it peaking during World War I, World War II, the 1970s and now, knitting is always more popular during times of national turmoil, Strawn said. She wrote the book “Knitting America” during her summers in Port Orchard, doing research at the Seattle Public Library.
“There’s a kind of joke within our group,” Schott said, “that the whole world would be a better place if everyone just knitted.”
Knitting through stress works on a personal level, too.
When she saw the sandwich-board sign that simply said “Yarn shop” and pointed to Sweet’s store, Bethany Cecere was already addicted to yarn.
A few years ago, as she ended a long relationship and got ready to move 3,000 miles from Virginia to Washington, Cecere jumped into knitting.
She said one of her inspirations was Monica Ferris’ mystery novels that feature a sleuth who stitches. Titles include “A Murderous Yarn,” “Hanging by a Thread” and “Framed in Lace.”
On her commutes to and from the shipyard, the 30-year-old Bremerton resident dropped by Sweet Stitch, where everyone knew her name.
“It was like a bar without the alcohol,” Cecere said. One of her favorite parts of being there was helping customers when Sweet was too busy ringing people up.
“It seemed like I spent more time awake there than at my house,” Cecere said.
The store attracted Bremerton resident Spring Munsel, too. She started hanging out there as a break from her house, where her 2-year-old toddler was the only conversation.
So when they were at the store’s closing party on April 1, Schott, Cecere and Munsel said it was like a wake.
“You’re there with good people and good food, but you knew something bad was going to happen,” said Munsel, who brought cupcakes.
In January, Sweet had decided to close the shop down. Its friendly atmosphere and selection of yarns earned the store loyal customers, but it never made it financially.
Knitters on the road are notorious for seeking out yarn shops. Caroline Perisho of Wild &Wooly in Poulsbo has had visitors from as far as Europe and Japan.
The many knitting stores in the Kitsap area often rely on tourists, Sweet said, and East Bremerton’s lack of them hurt. Sweet was always the only employee, unable to afford anything more than a little seasonal help.
Before they left, the group did clean the store out of yarn. Cecere bought the last fabric in the store, a skein of purple, orange and green.
But the knitting family is still there. The death of the store gave birth to a blog, Kitsap Yarn Over Girls, and regular meet-ups in Bremerton, Silverdale and Port Orchard. Even Sweet goes to the Bremerton one.
Anna Horn, a 25-year-old librarian, organized the first meet-up through the Web site Meetup.com. From all over the area came the knitters — many of them bloggers, too.
One of them was Sheila Jones, a Port Orchard knitter whose blog reaches people around the world.
For her and the others, the Internet is their new kitchen table.
Munsel, Sweet, Schott, Horn and Cecere all blog, and Ackerman has taken her teaching and yarn business online.
They keep up with each others’ blogs, and use the Kitsap Yarn Over Girls site to publicize knitting groups and special events, such as attending the Mariners’ annual Stitch &Pitch night.
Besides the local connections, the Web holds free patterns, an infinite selection of yarns to buy and a community of knitters blogging about their latest projects and helping each other.
“I think the Internet has a lot to do with the knitting boom,” Sweet said.
Although, if you thought cat Web pages and MySpace had too much information, wait until you get to the knitting blogs.
“You can follow the exquisitely detailed progress of a knitted sock,” Strawn said.
There are even virtual knitting circles. In a knit-along, people work on the same project, posting updates and helping each other through the tricky parts. Knitters sometimes exchange their finished socks and scarves with each other.
The Internet also makes the exotic domestic. While trying to spin dog fiber into yarn (fret not, no pups are hurt), Ackerman found a group devoted to working with Siberian dog hairs.
Despite the Internet’s stash of patterns, blogs, yarn sellers and support groups, though, there’s something about knitting with others that’s irreplaceable.
“You still need to have that kind of contact with people,” Sweet said.
Just watch how, when two knitters enter the same room, gravity kicks in.
It can be a wide orbit, one knitter furtively eyeing the other’s project, walking by and stealing glances, irresistibly drawn in by that Norwegian corded sweater, before finally mustering up the courage to ask, “What’s that pattern?”
Or it can be a crash landing, with a knitter just walking up, giving the scarf a rub between the fingers and complimenting a job well done.
“There’s an automatic connection,” Horn said.
Touching, you might say, is good. As Jones puts it, “The first thing you want to do is feel it.”
Knitting’s not always about making things, though the things knitters make are beautiful. It’s about keeping your hands busy on the ferry or at the doctor’s office, or finding new challenges in a complex art, or just having a place to go on Thursday nights.
One night in particular, everyone came into Sweet Stitch having had a rough week, Munsel said. On the table was a bottle of red wine, Australian shiraz. It was awfully tempting, but no one had a corkscrew.
For the next half-hour, they used anything they could find, from hammers to a multitool, to open the bottle, but nothing worked. Then, inspiration: They pounded a metal knitting needle into the cork, pulled hard and popped the cork out.
Triumphant, they started pouring the wine into paper cups, Sweet said. The wine started seeping through.
“I’m not sure it was worth it,” Sweet said. “But it was funny.”
Still, knitting doesn’t always go beyond the knitting. It’s not always easy to relate to older women when you’re just out of college and looking for a full-time job as a librarian, Horn said.
For Schott, though, her group’s become a crucial social lifeline.
“It’s a place for us to share our lives,” Schott said. She added, “I’ve never met a group of people who were so open and inviting.”
Now a day doesn’t go by when Schott doesn’t knit, by herself at home or with others. Baby clothes are her favorite (“I like instant gratification”). Besides the friends she’s made, Schott’s found knitting before bedtime keeps her panic attacks at bay, and helps her get to sleep.
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