It would have been relaxing had it not been for all the double-takes that were thrown our way by various passers-by. Judging from their expressions of incredulous wonder, you would have thought we were out there churning butter. We could have started rubbing our knitting needles together to try and start a fire and they probably wouldn’t have been any more amazed. It was clear that they still viewed knitting as a traditional pastime engaged in only by grandmothers. Having just come from New York City, where there are dozens of wool shops and weekly knitting groups filled with hip young women and men, this came as a bit of a surprise to me.
The knitting revolution has been slow in coming to Spain but there are signs that this is changing, at least in Barcelona, where more and more wool shops and knitting groups (sometimes called ‘stitch and bitch’ groups) have started popping up in the past couple of years. American Jennifer Callahan and her Catalan husband Miquel Saurina, were ahead of the game when they opened their shop ‘All You Knit is Love’ in the Born in 2006. “At the time, knitting wasn’t fashionable yet and the bank director who was giving us the loan for the store looked at us like we were crazy!” said Saurina. “He asked why we were starting a knitting store when so many others were closing down.”
But Callahan and Saurina had something entirely different in mind from the typical Barcelona wool shop. They set out to sell products that couldn’t be found anywhere else—natural yarns instead of acrylic and local products such as Xisqueta wool from the Catalan Pyrenees. “We also wanted people to be able to come in and touch the yarns rather than just look at them from behind the counter” said Callahan.
This last comment struck a chord with me. I’ve always found the process of buying wool in Spain to be intimidating. Traditionally in Spanish mercerias (shops where they sell craft and sewing supplies), most of the wool is kept behind a counter. Also behind the counter, there typically lurks a hawk-eyed saleswoman who looks less than thrilled that you’ve deemed it necessary to saunter into her realm. “Puedo ayudarle?” she pounces, before you’ve had a moment to regain your senses and work out why you’re standing next to a display case featuring 800 pairs of baby-blue booties and a cross-stitch of two mournful-looking horses.
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