By VANESSA DE LA TORRE, vdelatorre@courant.com
The
5:46 PM EDT, April 26,
2012
Gabriela Rosario has a new
obsession.
The
"It's calming, but at the same
time it's entertaining," said Rosario, 16, an outgoing brunette with blond
streaks in her hair. She headed toward the balls of yarn in the school
library.
"I knit."
Rosario has created four
scarves in just the past couple of weeks since she learned the knit stitch from
a classmate, 16-year-old Cristal Parrilla, who learned how to knit last year
from Bulkeley support staffer Debbie Solinsky, who was taught by Wilma Hoffman,
a retired special education teacher who is a project facilitator at the
school.
Hoffman is the den mother for
the Bulkeley knitters, a growing group of students who have taken up the yarn to
relieve teenage boredom and the stress in their lives.
On Wednesday morning, nearly 20
girls and two boys had gathered in the library to knit during the school's
weekly activity hour. Half of them had recently signed up and sought lessons
from Solinsky and Hoffman. The knitting demand has been so high, Hoffman said,
that she had gone to the crafts store three times this week to buy more supplies
with a $500 grant from the Petit Family Foundation.
"It helps them so much,"
Hoffman said.
Some students even knit during
classes, which is how
The latest project for Parrilla
is a soft, canary yellow baby's blanket that she began knitting over the weekend
for her unborn daughter.
The 10th-grader's due date is
May 19, but she feels the baby could arrive any day now. Parrilla knits so much
at home, she said, that even her mother is incredulous at times:
"Again?"
"I can knit until I fall
asleep," said Qusharia Perry, a sophomore who turns 16 Friday. She sat next to
Parrilla in the library Wednesday, chatting and knitting a green hat with brown
stripes she planned to keep. Perry figured she'd make socks next, then gifts for
her niece and nephew, although "my sister is like, 'I want my
scarf.'"
"It's a good way to pass the
time," said Perry, who has made new friends in the knitting club. "I can
multitask — knit and read and watch a movie and listen to music at the same
time."
And knitting is "a good way to
get out anger ... Knitting out your frustration," she said. "By the time you're
not angry anymore, you've made something."
At a nearby table, Solinsky
instructed a few newcomers on holding the knitting needles and looping the yarn.
Solinsky learned how to knit in Jan. 2011, and on Wednesday, wore a skillfully
woven plum and fuschia wool cardigan that she made over a six-week
period.
"Every time you do a new
project, you almost have to learn a new skill — you're really working your
brain," Solinsky said. There are two basic stitches: knit and purl. "So your
brain has to constantly think about what's next, the order of how you're doing
things, and how it's going to create this fabric...
"You have to have
patience."
Kevin Fortuna, a 15-year-old
freshman, spent the hour knitting a mustard-colored hat for himself. He has made three scarves to date, including one for
his mother.
"It's fun," he admitted,
quietly. "When I'm bored, I'm doing this."
http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-bulkeley-knitting-0427-20120426,0,259659.story