This may be the first time ever I’ve seen a story about men knitting in a major publication that didn’t have the tone of “What? Men can knit?”
This piece from the Wall Street Journal is about a men’s knitting group formed as part of the summer knitting group at Bryant Park in New York City (there’s been a knitting meetup there every Tuesday through the summer, and today is the last one). It’s sponsored by Knitty City, and owner Pearl Chin said she thought it was important to reach out to male knitters because women knit everywhere and often in groups while the guys tend to knit solo.
It’s a really lovely story, and the video shows several of the men sharing their knitting stories and what they get out of it. One knit his child booties for years, while another picked it up as a creative outlet at the side of his mother, a seamstress.
The story but not the video includes Jared Flood, aka Brooklyn Tweed, who says he’s still a relatively solitary knitter because “I think for men who are knitting, there’s such a stigma with it still,” he said.
I hope more nice stories like this will remind people who don’t knit that it’s perfectly normal and a wonderful use of your time, no matter who you are.
[Photo by Natalie Keyssar for the Wall Street Journal.]
