Knitting Circle Admits the ‘Communal Scarf’ Is Now Half a Mile Long and No One Knows How to Stop
“Every meeting, someone says this is the year we cast off,” one member said. “Then the needles come out.”
The Tuesday Night Knitting Circle confirmed this week what many had long suspected: the communal scarf begun in 2011 “to have something to do with our hands” has reached 2,680 feet and is stored in three barns.
“It was supposed to be a winter project,” said founding member Dorcas Purl. “The problem is that winter keeps coming back.”
The scarf, worked in whatever yarn members have on hand, contains an estimated 40 million stitches and a documented history of the town’s last fifteen years: a gray stretch from the sad spring of 2014, a riot of orange from the year everyone got really into pumpkins, and a single row of glittering silver that no member will explain.
Proposals to end the scarf have failed annually, most recently by a vote of 12 to 1. The dissenting member has since apologized.
“You don’t finish a thing like this,” Ms. Purl said, needles moving. “You just keep it going for whoever comes next. That’s the whole pattern.”
Paisley Loom covers arts for The Cozy Town Times and can usually be reached at the bakery, second table from the window.