Life in Apartment 303 can be unexpected.
There are so many different temperaments between me and my five roommates, but we all share similar enough personalities. We are all social creatures, so the apartment is always full. Described by my roommate Lauryn, it’s like “living with a pack of wolves.”
Almost every night, our guy friends visit and do their homework in our living room. These are my favorite moments: coming home to Lauryn sitting in her chair by the, spewing random facts. The guys usually take up the kitchen table, forcing the rest of us to sit on the couch or floor while a show plays softly in the background. It is there that the knitting circle began.
It started back during first semester of sophomore year, when Lauryn had first made her announcement to the apartment about her new hobby. She use to knit back in the day, and had decided she wanted to take it up again. “Okay,” I told her. “Give it a go.”
And she did.
I remember her purchasing all this yarn, starting to roll it into balls, while the boys watched, enraptured. She patiently showed the guys how to properly wrap the yarn tightly. First it was Hayden who helped her, spooling her yarn as Lauryn started to knit. Eventually, Hayden asked to try. Soon after Hayden, Kevin was asking to join, and then several others who decided to take up the hobby.
It wasn’t long before I found myself coming home to knitting parties in our living room. Our guy friends would sit with Lauryn, all quietly watching the TV as they quietly knitted scarves, headbands, or practiced on the shitty dish towel we had laying around the kitchen.
At first, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of all these guys knitting. I laughed at it at first, seeing these athletic men chilling together with their knitting needles, but I ultimately supported them. They enjoyed it, so what was the harm? As the semester continued, several of the guys moved on from their brief stint with knitting, but at least two of my guy friends continue this hobby. They’ve since bought their own needles, and it’s become routine for them to beg Lauryn and I to pick up rolls of yarn for them each time we make a trip to Joann Fabrics.
This behavior has shaped what I consider my new normal. It would feel odd to walk into a home without the boys sat in the living room, knitting away. Recently, Lauryn and I have joined them once again, picking up a new pastime: embroidery. So now, if a stranger was to walk into our apartment, they would be met with four individuals, knitting and embroidering away like a bunch of elder couples.
The moral of this story, if there is to be one, is to try something new. Regardless of whether it’s a hobby suited to other people’s perception of you, there’s no harm in testing out different hobbies. If you’re interested enough in knitting, give it a try! The world is your knitting circle. You just need to make the first stitch.
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by Maggie Christianson