Travelling and Ravelling: Tales of Knitting on the TTC

I've been living in Toronto, sans automobile, for over twenty years, and I've spent something in the neighbourhood of 10,000 hours on the TTC. Reading on a moving vehicle makes me motion sick, so I knit (or sometimes sew, crochet, cross-stitch, or embroider, etc.) to while away the time spent commuting. This has led to numerous knitting-related incidents.

— I often drop a ball of yarn. People are wonderfully courteous about picking it up for me and handing it back to me before I can retrieve it myself. On one occasion, two young men gallantly dove after the runaway skein… only to bump their heads together with an audible thump. Everyone on the bus cracked up, but with great effort I managed not to laugh, because it seemed impolitic to say the least.

— Sometimes when I drop a ball of yarn I don't notice it right away, but continue striding through a bus station with a ball of yarn unrolling behind me. Someone either points it out or runs after me with the ball, shouting, “Hey! Hey!!!”

— Once as I stepped off a subway car my knitting fell out of my backpack. A man called my attention to it once I was eight feet away. I turned to see the knitting lying on the platform and the ball of yarn lying just inside the subway car door... just as the doors closed on the strand of yarn. I had a panicked vision of my half-finished old-rose-coloured mohair afghan being dragged up and down the Yonge/University line for the rest of the day. All I could do was shriek, "NO! NOOOOOOOOO!" The train took off. The man had the goodness and the presence of mind to pick up the knitting, and the strand of yarn snapped as the train left the station. So my work was saved, but I lost most of a skein of yarn. I went to the lost and found twice in the following week, and it was never turned in. I'm now on the lookout for some mofo in a old-rose-coloured beret.

— I didn't start knitting on the bus immediately after I moved to Toronto at 19, because I was much less confident then. I must have been 23 or so before I finally just started doing it. It took me about a week to get used to being stared at. Everyone stares. I suppose it's natural that motion should attract the eye, and for a regular commuter it's probably the most interesting thing to look at. He or she has seen the scenery a thousand times before, and of course on the subway there's no scenery at all.

— Lots of people strike up conversations with me about knitting. What am I making? How long did it take me to learn to knit? They tell me that they've always wanted to learn to knit themselves, or about their own knitting, or how they used to knit, or how someone they know knits. Once years ago an elderly man said it was so nice to see a young girl knitting and fondly reminisced about how his mother knitted. Sometimes people take a more technical interest and ask me how or why I do this or that. One middle-aged man pointed out that I had bad form — his grandmother had taught him to knit once when he was a little boy, though he hadn't kept up with it. Often people near me start talking to each other about knitting.

— I can always tell when a current project is turning out especially well, because I get lots of compliments on it. It's especially cheering to have these compliments come from the target audience, as it were. At one point I was working on a sweater of my own design for a male friend, and worried it wasn't masculine-looking enough. Then one day a group of huge-panted homeboys told me that it was "real nice", so I figured it couldn't be too girly.

— Whenever I sit next to or across from another knitter, we exchange looks and small, fleeting, complicit smiles. And then we knit on in silence, like compatriots of such longstanding that there is no need for words.

— One day, I happened to be sitting next to a young guy, and his girlfriend was sitting on his other side. They had a make out session, and then suddenly the guy (who had a shaved head and was much-pierced and dressed in black leather) turned to me and very politely and deferentially asked me in the sweetest, softest voice how he could learn to knit, saying he'd always wanted to learn. I made some suggestions about knitting cafés and classes. He turned back to kissing his girlfriend for a bit, then turned to me again and asked how long it would take him to learn to knit, how soon he could expect to be able to make a sweater, etc. I answered these questions, and he turned back to his girlfriend and they made out some more. Then he turned back to me and asked me some questions about what he should do for a first project, and what kind of yarns and needles he should buy for it. I recommended a scarf, worsted yarn, and size 5mm needles, and he turned back to his girlfriend for more smooching. The alternate knitting consultations and make-out sessions continued until they left the train.

— One evening a chef from a downtown restaurant pressed a restaurant matchbook with his name scribbled on it into my hand and asked me to call him, telling me that despite "everyone thinking he was a big macho chef", he really would like to learn how to knit and wanted me to teach him. I was afraid his request was a euphemism for something else and I didn't call him.

— Kids are always the cutest starers and conversationalists. Back in the days when I patronised a laundromat, small children would routinely collect around me to watch me knit and ask questions. One day a little girl who sat next to me on the subway asked me what I was knitting. When I said, "It's a sweater for my niece," her eyes got big and round and she said, with awe, "Are you an auntie?" as though I were some rare and priceless creature. Plainly this was a child who had aunts who adored and doted on her.

— Another little girl asked me what I was knitting. When I said, "A sweater," she said, "Is it a surprise for me?"

— One little girl on a bus I used to take to work used to stare fixedly at me the entire duration of our ride together. I swear, she wouldn't even blink. And she always sat as close to me as she could. If she could sit next to me she’d beam with satisfaction as she climbed into the seat. One day as she did so, her mother, who had sat down across the aisle, said, "Come sit over here by me." The little girl protested, "But I want to sit next to the Knitting Lady!" and the mother good-naturedly said, "Oh, all right," and moved across the aisle herself to sit on the little girl's other side.

— People often refer to me as the Knitting Lady. I'd be sitting in a bus shelter knitting away and one of the people waiting outside would stick her head in and call, "Yoo hoo, Knitting Lady, the bus is coming." One day as I walked along the sidewalk a man I didn't at all recognize passed me, then turned and said, "Hey, you’re the Knitting Lady!" A former co-worker of mine who took the same bus as me told me that after I changed jobs several people on the bus said to him, "Why isn't the Knitting Lady on this bus anymore?"


Don't worry, buddy. I'm sure to be somewhere out there on another bus or train, knitting.