I am teaching gay men how to knit
When I lived in Paris I went out with an Icelandic man for five years. He introduced me to a large group of expats, and it is through them that I became familiar with the concept of the saumaklúbbur.
It literally means 'sewing club', but of course it has been at least thirty years since there were any needles involved. It used to indicate a group of women getting together to spend the afternoon doing creative manual and decorative activities. These days the tradition is still very much alive but it involves little more than gallons of very strong coffee and a weekly good chat with friends. It is still called saumaklúbbur though.
When it recently became known that I could knit, some friends asked me to teach them. Arrangements were made, wool and needles were bought (or, in my case, kindly given to me by Dr B.'s mother as she heard of the initiative), and a name was cleverly found for our little weekly get-together: Stitch 'n' Bitch.
We met last week and again tomorrow night. The idea is to give people enough confidence to achieve our usual level of bitching while skilfully knitting the evening away.
You don't have to be a gay man to stitch and bitch, but I must say it looks like we have a natural flair for both.
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