It takes a village

Knitters, in case you don’t already know, are extaordinary, generous people, at least in my book and my expeorrience.

It had been nearly a year since I’d been able to make the regular Saturday morning coffeehouse meeting of our totally non-exclusive all-inclusive band of knitters, but thanks to yarn buddies generous with their time and willing to wrestle a wheelchair and its occupant (that would be pirate-legged me), I’ve been at the last two Saturday gatherings.  It felt great and like the world had returned to a bit of normalcy.

It was awesome just to be out on an excursion that had nothing to do with medical woes and necessities and to be in the passenger seat of a car rather than rockin’ and rollin’ with the wheelchair strapped down to the floor of a bus with few, if any, shock absorbers. The wheelchair goes into the very back of the bus here at the center. I swear if I were a lactating mother my child would be feeding on milkshakes after each ride.

It’s also a treat not to have to wait and wait and wait some more for transportation. What a luxury to be able to just leave or go at the notion. It’s one of the marks of lost independence that galls.

But back to generous knitters. There were 8 of us there this morning. Not one was working on a personal project. All those flying needles were working yarn for new babies being born, socks for relatives, washcloths for troops overseas, stump socks for unknown amputees, and an afghan for an unknown family.

That’s the way it is at most gatherings of these knitters.

They’re generous with their time and support, too. Last June’s flood destroyed my yarn stash, an admittedly embarrassing horde that filled a closet underneath the stairwell in our apartment. My clothes were stuffed — and I do mean stuffed — into an antique English wardrobe because I turned my closet into a yarn trove.

  It all washed down the river.

But my knit buddies came to the rescue and created a new stash for me with contributions from their stashes. The yarn filled two large wicker hampers, several smaller baskets and a tote or two. None of which I’d had a chance to sort through until Thursday night when the “west side”  branch of CR Knits descended on the center here, commandered the community living room, whisked up my stash and proceeded to organize, sort and catalog all the yarn.

 When the evening was done, I had a ring for each hamper on which an index card for each yarn — along with a tiny snippet of the yarn — dangles with the card telling the weight of the yarn, the fiber, whether it’s washable, the yardage  and possible projects for the yarn.

How divine. And what a generous gesture of time and support.

The west side knitters come from all over town and started coming over here on Thursday evenings so I’d have knitting company even though I couldn’t  leave the building physically.  We also have a little offshoot of knitters who stop by on Tuesday afternoons to spend an hour or two knitting.

These women have made sure I know I can count on them and made certain I never feel isolated.

They are indeed a close-knit group of friends.