Knitting In Public

This last week I've been in darkest Somerset, working away from home. I took my knitting bag with me and as you can see from the photo above, I managed to get some knitting done. I knitted in the evening in the hotel bar, and during the day at work. I'd just like to clarify, by the way, that I knitted at lunch time, not when I was actually supposed to be working.

The reason I thought I would write a post about this is that I often hear people saying that they don't feel they can knit at work (in their lunch hours I mean!), and one reason which is frequently given is that they work in a profession with a high proportion of men, such as IT. My profession is relatively male-dominated, and I have knitted in my lunch hour, without any adverse reactions from colleagues, on many occasions over the last twenty years.

People do often come up to me and ask what I am knitting, and I am happy to tell them. Many people of my age or thereabouts have memories of their mothers knitting when they were children, and so it brings back pleasant memories of their childhood. A very high proportion of male colleagues as well as female have told me that they were taught to knit as children, which surprised me at first, but when I think about it, my brother learned to knit along with me when we were kids, and I taught DSOK and Catbert to knit together when they were little. One colleague even remembered his father knitting!

Now if you really feel uncomfortable about knitting in public, or in your place of work, then I think that you have to respect your own feelings, after all, you have to enjoy it, and if you are tense and nervous then it isn't going to go well! But if you are dying to whip out your latest socks on two circs in your lunch hour and you are just not sure if it will be OK, I hope this post will encourage you. This week I was leading a team of five male colleagues to complete a demanding and intensive task. At the end of the week, we had some photos of the team doing stuff which I had taken as we went along, and the guys asked if they could also take a photo of me knitting to add to them. That's where this photo comes from, and I thought that was rather nice of them. So give it a go, you might be surprised what you will learn about your fellow workers!

Incidentally, I managed to finish the back of Ivy, so I'm going to be starting the left front very soon! I'm really pleased with how it is turning out.