Another fifth grade mom and I were doing some PTO work together a couple of weeks ago. She told me about being in a coffee shop in Fort Worth or some other city. “There were college-age girls there, knitting!” she told me. “A lot of them!”
No surprise there for us, hmmm? I told her she ought to have a look on the web, and marvel at how many knitting blogs and web sites there are. Then I said, “I’m a coffee shop knitting pioneer, you know.”
She didn’t know, so I told her about how in the late 1980s, Austin had a place on Guadalupe Street, called Captain Quackenbush’s Intergalactic Café and Coffee Bar, or something very similar. It was an espresso bar, long before Starbucks’ global dominance. Half a dozen or so of us met, every Tuesday evening at Quackenbush’s for coffee and knitting: Carol Wyche, Suzanne Correira, Jane L., Jane E., Nancy M., Gay Fay K., and others from time to time. Those were good days. We didn’t know we were pioneers. We just loved to get together and knit.
When Quackenbush’s changed for the worse, we moved to the brand new Schlotzsky’s flagship store on South Lamar. You can still get delicious sandwiches, fabulous desserts, and yummy coffee there.
At different times, Carol and I hosted stitching sessions that predated Stitch ‘n’ Bitch by a couple of decades. We dreamed of a time like the present, where so many people would catch knitting fever and understand our obsession. Besides, more people knitting means a lot more variety of yarn to buy!
Some of us have been here for a long, long, LONG time, waiting for you guys to show up.
While I’m on the topic of coffee shops, let me tell you how civilization as encroached upon our rural idyll. Until just a couple of weeks ago, the last frontier outpost of Starbuck’s was in Granbury, Texas. As I write, the finishing touches are being put upon a new Starbuck’s in Stephenville, Texas, a giant step of 22 miles into the wilderness.
I like Starbucks, but I’ll be sticking with the locally-owned coffee shop in Stephenville, The Coffee Studio. I will bring Ella and my knitting, and knit alone while she plays with the toys, until someone else in Stephenville cares to join us.