Social Fabric
Women are coming together to stitch and bitch. Could knitting be the new yoga?
By Lena Watts

At the crowded Redline bar,restaurant in Harvard Square,you can tell the Stitch 'n' Bitch knitters from the post work drinking crowd by what they're wearing.Instead of the requisite trendy scene gear,they sport homemade handbands,socks,and sweaters.And instead of staking out high profile seats at the bar,they make their way to the back of the dimly lit room.

But don't get the wrong idea. These people are as cutting edge as anybody in the place,part of a multigenerational revival in the knit -one, purl-two thing. The half dozen regulars--from college kids to grandmothers,playwrights to computer techies--work on intricate sweaters,socks and mittens without feeling the least bit self-conscious in the smoke-filled bar."I've always knitted in isolation because none of my friends knitted," says Carolynn Vincent,who works at the Woolcott&Company yarn store located next to redline. "So it's nice to gather and talk to folks about knitting."

Truth be told ,it's more stitch and bitch.Group discussion jumps from pattern reading to chaos theory,back to wool quality, and then how one math professor uses knitting to demonstrate non-Euclidean space. It's a diverse group,to be sure,but the only real point of controversy is what to order for dinner. As Stitch'n' Bitch regular Veronica McNulty puts it:" What goes with knitting? Buffalo wings? Not really."

Is anyone in the group wary of being seen as living anachronism? Apparently not. Instead,they collectively point to the craft's meteoric rise in popularity as evidence that it's relaxing,ceative,social-- and newly chic.Ellen Wilson pauses midstitch on her shawl and offers the last word on the subject:

"You know," she says echoing Charlotte from Sex and the City,"knitting is the new yoga."