The ocean view is what one sees sitting on a bench on the Dallas Road walkway near the Ogden Point Cafe (Victoria BC) .
The cat – his name is Maxwell – is what one sees (also) looking out the window at Koffi Cafe at Haultain and Belmont Streets.
Both sights make me feel good, bring a smile to my face and heart (in Maxwell’s case it’s a wide grin!) and gratitude for the experience. A delightful setting is one of the aspects of knitting playfully: the ocean and sky and bird sounds and sea scent and waves lapping and constantly changing clouds playing with sun rays enhance any experience; taking joy from knitting is one experience that compounds and expands. The scene (and the cheese scones hot from the oven at the OP Cafe!) draw me often to sit and knit and chat and eat.
A group of knitters meet each Monday afternoon at Koffi to – well, sit and knit and chat and eat….. Some of the same group and some different gather each Friday afternoon at Three Squares Downstairs at the corner of Johnson and Pandora Streets. These are only two of many knitting get-togethers happening each week in Victoria, the Knitting Capital of Canada.
KIP’ing. Knitting in Public. Knitting playfully. So very worthwhile.
I have great respect and admiration for those who engage in tailored knitting, complicated patterns, intricate techniques, definite standards. I am more a casual simplicity knitter, prefer garments as architecture that house the body loosely, am interested in watching – and allowing – whatever happens in the intent. Playful knitting is an attitude that any knitter can make use of.
Traditionally, knitting involved producing for the Guilds (what a challenge that must have been with stringent requirements and time limits and a career hanging on the outcome), or knitting for necessity: family, fisherman, commerce, the war effort etc. It seems we now have the luxury of knitting for fun. And, like doing anything else, when we knit because we want to, not because we have to, the endeavour turns into an adventure and invites the unexpected, beckons new horizons.
Thinking of knitting as a toy gives a different perspective.