Knitting in the News: Jumpers and Jazz, Knitting for Relaxation and one Love-Struck Knitter

As part of the Jumpers and Jazz festival in Australia, which is dedicated to getting people out of the house in wintertime by providing them with good jazz and cool textile sculptures, the proprietor of Bryson's Place, a coffee shop, has been providing patrons with wool and needles to knit squares to be made into rugs donated to charity. She says they have hundreds of squares and could use some help putting them together into rugs, if you're a stitcher in the Warwick area.

This month's issue of Health magazine features a story (that's not online, far as I can tell) about different ways to relax and meditate without being completely still. No surprise that one of the things the author tried was knitting. Margaret Renkl calls knitting "the perfect example of active stillness" and notes that it can lower your heart rate and blood pressure (assuming you haven't ripped out the same two inches five times) and that the rhythm of the needles automatically slows your thoughts.

Finally, the Ottawa Citizen tells the heartwarming story of a crazy knitter who decided to knit her own wedding dress. Stage manager Kate Macdonnell uses knitting to relax from her massively multitasking career, and when her boyfriend proposed she decided she wanted to knit her dress. The project took six months (and, one can imagine, tons of sweat and tears) and the two were married a couple of weekends ago. Unfortunately there's no picture of the dress!