Saturday, October 14, 2006

public knitting



As regular readers will know, I do much of my knitting in public, simply because I knit as something to do on the bus to work. That's one of the reasons why I love this photo - from the shoot for exchequered. The traffic lights changed, the bus' engines growled into action, and went passed at just the wrong moment, completely obscuring the scarf.

There was a knit a river meet by the London Eye today. But I had teaching work to catch up on, so at 10 o'clock this morning I was sitting on the 36 bus to college, happily knitting away. We were making good time, and had just gone passed the Oval.

The traffic lights changed, the bus' engines growled into action, it turned into another lane and I spotted a man walking down the street carrying a HUGE blue patchwork blanket on his head. It was a sight anyone would have stared at out of the window of a bus, and it was a good few seconds before I realised I'd seen that blanket before and knew exactly who he was and where he was going.

London is such a huge place things like that don't happen very often. I was tempted to lean out the window and wave my knitting at them to wish them luck. But seeing as I was whizzing around one of the larger roundabouts in town and on the top deck of a bus I figured they'd probably not see me. Even if they did, I'd still look a bit strange. And in someways it was nicer left unsaid - simple silent recognition of fellow knitters.

But it did make me smile. It was a bit like spotting a celebrity, only better.

8 comments:

Laura B said...

That is so cool!

Anonymous said...

chrystie and i were at the knit a river event! we wondered if you knew about it. it was nice, not a huge turnout but a lot of people stopped by to find out more about it.

Anonymous said...

that's such a good project, I bet he looked amazing walking round London with it on his head!

Anonymous said...

You should have waved your knitting out the window - it'd would have been hilarious!

Anonymous said...

I'm always bumping into people I know. London's a very small place really!

RooKnits said...

I saw some people knitting on a train from Bham to London on Friday night and wanted to cry out "come and join me, I'm knitting too" but was too shy.

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