Palmerton’s knitting club creates friendships

If there’s one place to be on a rainy autumn night, it’s the Palmerton Library.

Upstairs, a group of local women who call themselves the Knitting Club sit around a conference table covered with bags of yarn as they all work on their latest projects.

One member is knitting a blanket, another is crocheting a baby blanket, while another is unraveling some earlier work.

It’s a friendly group, or you could call it a community.

Christine DeSousa, the library’s director, said, “There’s no real structure. Folks socialize, share patterns, teach each other, learn from each other. Membership runs the gamut from total beginners to well-experienced knitters.”

Her mother has been a longtime member and usually helps with the teaching when it’s needed.

The club has been meeting for a long time; it was originally the brainchild of Diane Danielson, the director of the library who retired earlier this year after 13 years of service.

Local residents donate yarn; abandoned projects, which can be disassembled to recover the materials; and needles/hooks of all kinds, which are then made available to the members.

The members then make projects, many of which are donated to local charities such as the Valor Clinic in Kunkletown and St Joseph’s Food Pantry in Jim Thorpe.

There are also dozens of online charitable organizations that collected knitted goods for all kinds of uses; Hat Not Hate has an anti-bullying campaign, Knots of Love collects knitted caps for chemotherapy patients, Knitting and Giving collects goods for the homeless and hospital patients, Knitted Knockers collects knitted soft prosthetics for mastectomy patients.

But even more than helping out the disadvantaged, the club is all about casual, stress-free socializing. It’s been proven that knitting is an excellent way to reduce stress and blood pressure. Conversations at the meeting covered topics such as doilies, how Palmerton has changed over the past few decades, yarn shops in Ecuador, meal planning and the weather.

Maya Sutton, of Walnutport, said, “I knit all the time. I can even be in a conversation when I’m knitting.”

And on they went, row after row, stitch after stitch.

Knitting has enjoyed a resurgence over the past few years. Clubs of women, men, millennials, teens, even children, have been springing up all over the country.

The Palmerton Knitting Club meets the first Monday of the month at 6 p.m. in the library. No dues, no materials or tools to purchase, just show up, meet some new neighbors, and learn a new skill.