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When Parker, a black cocker spaniel, tore up a favorite ski cap with snowflakes on it, Edward Garza IV, 19, knew what to do. He went to the Yarn Barn he had often driven by at the Olmos Park roundabout on McCullough and picked out thick, chunky white yarn and headed to the cash register.
"Do you even know how to knit?" then-manager Kathy Fisher asked. Garza didn't, so she patiently showed him, even though the hat was beyond repair.
At his next visit, two days later, he already had two feet of a scarf knitted, and he was yearning for yarn.
The store became his daily hangout.
"I quickly got inducted into the club of knitters, great friends," Garza said. He soon accepted a job there and took advantage of his 20 percent employee discount. "The friendship was so great (that) I never considered it work. The friends you build at the Yarn Barn, it's pretty amazing."
Garza took six bags of yarn with him this fall to Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
"It's a healthy addiction," Garza said. "It could be alcohol, drugs. It could be a lot worse. It's yarn. I prefer Twinkle super chunky virgin wool the size of a kindergarten child's Crayolas."
Marge Hudgins, who has worked at the Yarn Barn for 28 years, said that Garza created a considerable number of projects in the six months he worked there, including several purses, afghans, baby blankets, socks, slippers, hats, scarves and a sweater for his mom and a shawl for his grandmother. He even taught a sock-making class this summer.
Hudgins and her co-workers miss Garza a lot since he left for Lubbock, but they are in touch frequently via phone and e-mail.
Shirley Kelley, longtime Yarn Barn customer-turned-employee four years ago, described Garza as outgoing, warm, friendly, caring, honest and family-oriented.
"We all call ourselves his grandmothers," Kelley said. "He was one of the few really polite, nice kids. We don't see enough like him. He is such a nice kid. We all just fell in love with him."
And as for knitting, "He really took to it like a duck out of water," Kelley said.
Garza said he considers the ladies his friends and that they put up with a lot more than his grandparents would.
"Marge in Charge, she can guide you eyes closed, hands tied behind her back. She's a jack of all trades," Garza said. "Marge is a pilot, renews her license every year. Shirley worked with SAISD many years. They choose to be happy. They have all achieved so much."
These achievements are often forgotten because they work at the Yarn Barn and because they're older, Garza said. He jokes with his frat brothers that "the girls" from work are going to come visit him in Lubbock.
"I miss them so much," Garza said. "I could sing until I'm blue in the face, and it wouldn't be enough for me to them."
Hudgins learned to knit from an aunt at age 9. Kelley learned from a book and is still learning every day, she said.
"It's relaxing and creative," Kelley said. "I think somebody today said it's therapeutic, and I think that it is. I can't sit and watch television without doing something with my hands. I'll fall asleep."
Garza, who grew up in Olmos Park and Monte Vista, has trained for marathons and is a life guard. His father owns Main Street Pizza & Pasta, a neighborhood eatery popular with students at this college.
"(Knitting's) a lost art. It's so easy to go buy something," Garza said.
And the amount of enjoyment he can reap from a purchase is great.
"A scarf may cost $18 to make, two weeks off and on for several hours. Time outweighs the price, and you have something you can remember molding."
Yarn Barn customers are predominantly women, Hudgins said. "We do have some men. In fact, we had a man in earlier, stuck on his crochet."
One customer knits so she can be remembered after her death, not for what car she drove or shirt she wore, but that she took time to knit for someone.
Men knitting isn't a new concept. At one point in history, knitting and weaving were men's chores. Online communities exist now, like www. menknit.net, and knitting blogs proliferate. Titles include "From woolly minds come woolly thoughts"; "Knitty Dude: My place to stitch and bitch ... two things I do really well"; "Hedoknitstic"; "Mister Clicker's Knits: ... my knitting thoughts and escapades"; and "The Insecurity Blanket: The ongoing saga of a practitioner of the Drunken Monkey Style of knitting to hone his craft and avenge his family's honor."
But how do women react to men knitting? To some it's a chick magnet, but to others ...
"Girls will look at me like 'what are you doing' and say 'I don't even know how to do that,'" Garza said, noting that the diversity championed at this college allowed him to be himself. "I think knitting can just be an extension of you."
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