“Your seed stitch is very good,” says Lydia while examining the bumpy two inches of pink knitting I have just presented to her.
“You might try your first project now, Fiona,” she says before moving on to the next 30-something girl sitting round a table in the back room of a knitting shop called String at 1015 Madison Avenue. We’ve come for a ‘Sip ’n’ Stitch’ evening – or, as Lydia (our Ukrainian teacher) calls it, ‘Seep and Steeeetch’ – at the shop on the borders of the Upper East Side. It’s me and three other girls – one native New Yorker, one New Zealander and one actress-turned-PR-girl, originally from Ohio.
It has been written recently in those glossy American weekend newspaper supplements that knitting is New York’s latest craze. And it is true that Geri Halliwell has been pictured with a pair of knitting needles in her hands. But while this may lead those in the wool PR industry to weep with joy into their energising soy milkshakes, that hardly makes it a craze.
However, who would have thought that in the city of a thousand bars and restaurants and 24-hour living you could find a knitting shop that opens its doors after hours – for girls like me to sit and stitch and chat and get in touch with the kind of feminine urges that the Sex and the City girls sadly seem to lack?
It’s rather comforting to find myself in the company of other New York citizens who have found themselves similarly drawn to something so old-fashioned and quiet. The joy of knitting in company is that you don’t have to talk all the time – it’s a lovely way to meet new people without the pressure of feeling that you are out to meet new people. And during the three hours of our class we all periodically slip into temporary silences while we concentrate on the ‘clack clack’ of our needles.
By the end of the evening Rachel, the New Zealander, has started a poncho, New Yorker Carla has embarked on a bobbly blue scarf, Elizabeth from Ohio is thinking about making a coat for her dog and I’m four rows into a pale-pink babygrow. We’ve also discussed where we all live, why we are here, whether we like it and why Lydia left the world of Ukrainian biochemistry to teach knitting on Madison Avenue. I wonder if Geri Halliwell has found her knitting to be such a bonding experience...
We left the cosy, fuggy backroom of String just after 10pm, emerging into the chill wind of a New York night. I felt as if I’d just climbed out from under a warm American quilt of domesticity, all the better equipped to face the rush of one of the world’s finest cities.
As we all said our goodbyes we agreed that this is a little part of New York that deserves to be celebrated – the quiet but entirely pleasant celebration of the homely crafts. I know it might sound like an odd recommendation to make but, should you find yourself exhausted by the pace of New York, flattened by the traffic noise and bewildered by the sheer choice of entertainment on offer, why not come along the next Wednesday evening you are in town?
Apart from anything else you can have a good laugh at my malformed pink babygrow, made for my friends back home who have just had a little girl. When I showed it to my housemate he looked carefully at the rather oversized hood and teeny-weeny odd arms and said: “Have they given birth to ET?”
Well, it is just the first of many...
