It’s an afternoon in early June and Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) on Main Street is packed with winter attire – unseasonable even for this year’s cold and rainy spring.

The mittens, scarves and hats are all in various stages of creation at MAWA’s Stitch ’n Bitch, one of the many knitting and crafting groups that regularly gather in Winnipeg.

These groups, which meet in art galleries, homes, yarn stores or even pubs, allow (mostly) women to share the latest in crafting gossip.

Other than an eight-year-old boy needle-felting surprisingly accomplished animal figurines, I’m the only male in attendance on this Saturday at MAWA; thankfully, I’m not the least skilled knitter.

Over coffee and Peek Freans, the conversation drifts from casting-on techniques to local wool producers to various grandmotherly one-up-man-ships.

“My Grandma could knit way faster and made 11 sweaters every winter.”

Most knitters in the group want to learn more, and the event gives more accomplished knitters the chance to share technical and anecdotal advice.

Melanie Wesley, one of the most technically accomplished knitters in the group, speaks about the bustling Winnipeg knitting scene.

Rather than being a recuperation of old fashioned morals, crafting groups and handmade movements are more invested in a greener, more community-based economy, Wesley said during a phone interview following the Stitch ’n Bitch event.

“ Winnipeg’s crafting groups are definitely part of a larger movement that’s afoot.

She sees the importance of locally produced wool for her craft, and enjoys the “sense of community when you support local business.”

Wesley is part-owner of Ram Wool, a local yarn store which she describes as a worker-owned co-operative.

She said knitting has never really died out – Ram Wool has been around for years and years in different forms – but admits there is a new interest in community-classes and group get-togethers.

Wesley sees young knitters as a creative group who “revisit old techniques to make them relevant to our generation.”

“Young people are more inclined to jump in [in recent years].”

Though I was the only male at MAWA’s Stitch ’n Bitch, there are guys out there who knit – but maybe just from the comfort of their living rooms.

“There are lots of men knitters on the Internet,” Wesley said.

Knitting cultures’ use of both virtual communities and “real” meetings creates an interesting dichotomy.

Wesley thinks knitters crave the “tactile and organic” quality of making something yourself, but that doesn’t exclude a thriving online community.

Ram Wools’ website (www.ramwools.com) has a busy blogging network of knitters, and websites like Ravelry (www.ravelry.com) are user-run networks of resources for both technique and community.

Etsy (www.etsy.com) is a network of handmade craft vendors that directly links crafters to consumers who want to invest in handmade goods.

Winnipeg’s crafting groups are definitely part of a larger movement that’s afoot. As evidence, the American documentary Handmade Nation plays at the Ellice Theatre on June 19, with a craft-sale preceding the screening. The film seems intent on congratulating the “indie-craft” movement for its unbridled creativity.

The rise of knitting is also connected to fine arts. MAWA is group that mentors young artists, and certainly no distinctions were made between knitting the functional object, such as a mitten, and fine arts that incorporate the craft.

Downtown gallery Aceartinc also hosts a monthly embroidery group, and Duke of Kent Legion on McDermot Avenue presently features an exhibition of Alberta artist Richard Boulet’s work, which incorporates cross-stitch and quilting.

And at “Subconscious City,” the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s showcase of local artists last year,  Leah Decter’s “raze” used traditional wool felting techniques in an installation piece that connected historical cottage-industry crafts with an investigation of contemporary city-space and suburbia.

Winnipeg artist Kerri-Lynn Reeves, a crafter and Stitch ‘n Bitch-er, also employs embroidery in her fine art.

“[Crafting has a] rich history throughout civilization where you know you are using techniques that have been used for centuries… but at the same time it is comforting, familiar, inviting, and simple in the personal associations that we as individuals can attach to it.”

There wasn’t any snobbery among the artists present at Stitch ‘n Bitch, nor was there any pressure to engage with the historical and cultural implications of the re-emergence of craft; it seems knitting, crafting and DIY movements are more about investing in creativity.

The generation of young people who grew up being creative are now trying to refashion that creativity for a hip, adult world (no kudos to Martha Stewart).

Published in Volume 63, Number 28 of The Uniter (June 18, 2009)