For Mount Vernon club, knitting's a ball
   Story by Susan Elzey, Register & Bee, Jan 10, 2007

They chat, they eat, they share their triumphs and tragedies, and along the way they do a lot of knitting and purling.

It is the Knitting Group of Mount Vernon, whose members believe that fun and refreshments go best when accompanied by the click of nimble knitting needles. Begun two years ago, the group meets on the first and fourth Thursday of every month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in a large room at Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church.

The 10 or so knitters quickly identified Nancy Evans and Pat Giles as the "guiding forces" for the group.

"I had started back knitting when I had to stay in because of different situations," Evans said, "and I felt it would be nice to have friends to knit with. This was a nice place, and the church was willing."

One reason they like to meet at Mount Vernon instead of their homes is because the lighting is better and they have more space to put their work and, they laughed, food on the table. On this day, the table held leftover Christmas fudge, cheese straws and pecan bars.

The women gather around large tables and sit on metal chairs for the four hours they meet, but they agree the chairs don't get hard because the company is so good. "We bring our own lunch, and when we are having fun, the time goes by fast," Shirley Duncan said.

Everyone is quick to point to Giles as the knitting authority, but she quickly disagrees with a "no, I'm not." Her ability is hard to dispute, however, since she is wearing a hand-knitted sweater full of intricately worked flowers on the front.

"We really do accuse Pat of knitting day and night because she completes so many projects," Evans said. "Today she's looking at a project and will probably have it completed by next time."

Giles said, "You can get a lot of knitting done if you have a husband willing to cook."

Carol Carlish, who was there for the first time, sat and patiently worked on the stitches for a stocking cap she had just learned how to do under Giles' tutelage. "I just wanted to learn how to knit, and a friend told me about the group," she said.

The group's comedian, they said, is Rosalind Morton, one of the eight retired teachers in the group. "My husband is afraid I'm not keeping up," she said. "I'll go home and he'll ask if anyone helped me today."

"Our husbands always want to know what we did," Evans said.

Morton said, "The knitting group is the most wonderful thing that's happened to me since I retired. We do it for friendship, camaraderie and bonding. It helps to reinforce our friendships and sense of belonging."

"An hour of knitting is better than an hour with a psychiatrist," Evans said, "and cheaper."

The women in the group not only enjoy each other's company, but they are generous in sharing their knitted goods with others. "We have given away over 50 sweaters," Evans said.

Some of their projects include knitting lap throws for the shut-in members of Mount Vernon and sweaters; stocking caps and novelty purses for the Salvation Army; sweaters and stocking caps for the Henry Fork Center, a ministry of the Methodist Church in Rocky Mount, N.C.; and Christmas sweaters and mittens for the Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina.

"We knit Katrina Squares, which were sent to New Orleans where they were put together for security blankets for displaced children," Evans said. "We also knit helmet liners for soldiers in Iraq." She found out about those opportunities on the Internet. Now the group has started working on baby shawls for the newborn babies at Mount Vernon.

The group also goes on field trips to Greensboro to buy yarn at the several knitting shops there.

Sunday School classes at Mount Vernon often contribute money for the yarn for their various projects.

"Sometimes we even knit for ourselves," Evans said. "It's more than a social group, more than a supportive, friend group," Morton said. "I had no idea it would manifest itself this way in my life."

"We're just a close-knit group," Lucia Waters punned.