The table was piled high with a heap of hats and scarves, as if a schoolyard of children had just rushed in from a snowball fight.
But this wasn’t a scene from snowy Vermont or Colorado. The table was in a backroom of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in downtown Honolulu, and it reflected the labors of the church’s knitting ministry, which sends its hats, scarves and mittens for charitable causes around the world.
“I think it’s time for us to send off another shipment,” said Nancy Rowe, a member of the church who heads the knitting ministry.
Knitting has become one of the ways that island residents have coped with the pandemic, with knitting circles that formerly met in person being sustained online. Now, as the pandemic eases, knitting is slowly moving back into the face-to-face gatherings again, and soon it will even get a showcase in the arts world as well, with a display of “yarn bombing” — a kind of graffiti-inspired knitting project — in the offing at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
The St. Peter’s knitting ministry started about 15 years ago after a church member met the chaplain from the Seamen’s Church Institute, which presents hats and scarves to merchant mariners during Christmastime. Knitting groups around the world provided more than 17,000 items for the institute that year, Rowe said.
“There was something that was kind of a delight, knowing that people from all over the country and foreign countries as well were knitting on behalf of these men to keep them warm while they were out hauling cargo,” Rowe said. “We had such a wonderful camaraderie develop over time that we just kept knitting.”
The church has since sent knit items to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, sending off 73 hats during the pandemic, as well to the French town of Lourdes, a destination for sick pilgrims seeking its healing powers.
About a half-dozen people participate in the knitting circle, with one of the members of the group specializing in knitting lap robes for people in care homes, Rowe said, adding that the group will often respond to special requests.
“Knitting has a lot of therapeutic benefits,” Rowe said. “It calms people. There’s something about the rhythmic nature of knitting that is good for your soul. There’s something very meditative and almost Zen about the knitting.”
During the pandemic, the group, which usually meets twice a month, couldn’t meet in person and had to go online using Zoom. Rowe said she found the experience enlightening. “We had people who were homebound who were able to join us,” she said. “It was something to look forward to for all of us.”
The importance of knitting as a family tradition is evident in a storage room adjoining the St. Peter’s knitting room. The room is full of yarn and needles of all shapes and sizes, which have been donated.
“When people die, they’ve got a stash (of yarn),” said Linda Miller, who joined the St. Peter’s knitting circle after deciding to start knitting for charity. “Their children have to do something with this stuff, so St. Peters is the thing that pops first (on Google) where you can donate.”
Miller, who spent the heart of the pandemic sequestered in the Kahala Nui retirement center, also belongs to a Hawaii Kai-based knitting circle that she met up with after someone saw her knitting in a coffee shop one day and invited her into to join. “It’s something that’s always happened with knitters,” Miller said. “They get together socially.”
Like the St. Peter’s knitting circle, she kept up with that group by meeting them online, using Google Hangouts instead of Zoom. Although that group has also started meeting in person again as members have gotten vaccinated, they still use Hangouts to remain in touch with one member who moved to Japan during the pandemic.
“She gets up at breakfast and has breakfast with us, and then she knits with us,” Miller said.
Sharing online
In Hawaii, the knot that has tied knitting circles together for years has been Aloha Knitters, which on its website describes itself as “a very loosely organized group of yarn enthusiasts who like to get together and hang out with our current projects.” Members would meet in various locations around Oahu, sharing ideas and projects on Facebook, Twitter and on Ravelry.com, a website that provides designs, patterns and contacts for knitters, crocheters and other fiber artists.
Susan Stapleton moved to Honolulu from the mainland just two years ago and was able to find a community on Aloha Knitters. “It’s a way of meeting people when you don’t have kids in school, or you don’t have a workplace to go to,” she said. “It gives you a broad cross section of people, and ages and abilities.”
During the pandemic, Stapleton wound up hosting several of the Zoom knitting circles from her Kakaako apartment. She’s become sophisticated enough at it to weed out “Zoom bombers” — people who horn in on a Zoom group uninvited with the intention of disrupting the event. It’s happened twice so far.
“It didn’t upset me,” Stapleton said. “It was just sad, that they felt the need to do that.”
Zoom has expanded the community of knitters considerably, with knitters logging on from the mainland U.S., Canada and even Europe. One local man has participated in six separate knitting circles through Zoom, Stapleton said. “For him, that’s his main socialization activity,” she said.
“Continuing the knitting was a godsend with COVID, because when you’re isolated in your apartment, it gives you something to do, and with the Zoom groups, we just kind of hang out,” she said. “Sometimes you’re knitting, sometimes you’re showing people what yarn you bought, sometimes we’re learning something new. Sometimes we’re talking about something entirely different. It’s become a social, coffee-klatsch kind of thing.”
Yarn bombers
Aside from being a productive, social activity, knitting has moved into the artistic realm as well. All of those patterns created by interlocking threads has inspired multimedia artist Michelle Schwengel-Regala to create sculpture made of wire. A longtime knitter, she was on a voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti and saw scientists using wire to lower their equipment into the water.
“It occurred to me that I could use wire to make static, structured sculptures,” she said.
Inspired by another trip to Antarctica, she’s created icicle-like sculptures made of wire, woven together in the same pattern as knitting. Some were recently on display at The Arts at Marks Garage exhibition “Lasting Impressions,” and in May she’ll have another exhibit of them at Fishcake, the Kakaako design/furniture/art showroom in Kakaako.
She and other fiber artists are also gearing up for an exhibition opening at the Honolulu Museum of Art next month. The yearlong interactive project, called “Joyful Return,” will be divided into seven parts and will include a knitting project that will essentially be a museum-wide yarn bombing, which has been a phenomenon that has occurred on Oahu periodically over the last several few years.
Local yarn bombers are loosely organized in a group that calls itself theFUZZ Hawaii. They’ve adorned things like bike racks with colorful woven coverings, and in November, they decorated a small bookshelf outside the Ars Cafe in Diamond Head with a “sweater” of red, white and blue yarn, with the word “Vote” woven into it.
One member of theFUZZHawaii, who goes by the moniker Aknitymous, said she likes it because she “appreciates this anonymous, public works of art,” she said.
“It’s a nonpermanent kind of graffiti,” said Aknitymous, an artist and mother of three. “And I enjoy the fact that this is the sort of thing that people associate with grannies. People don’t take knitting seriously. It’s something that their grandma did, but you can take it to this new level and make more of a statement with it.”
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Knitting needs
Groups
>> Aloha Knitters: alohaknitters.wordpress.com
>> St. Peter’s Episcopal Church knitting ministry: stpetershonolulu.org/k2-p2-knitting-ministry.html
>> theFUZZ Hawaii: instagram.com/thefuzzhawaii
Supplies
>> Yarnstory Hawai: 1411 S. King St., Suite 201, 724-7224 or facebook.com/YarnstoryHawaii
>> Yarn & Needlecrafts: 46 Hoolai St., Kailua, 262-9555
