It becomes like magic.

It was a sunny Saturday in May or June, I think. A tall blonde knitter that I recognised from the last knit night, came to the shop looking for some wool to match one of the colours in the blue check of a beautiful kilt he pulled out of his rucksack.

In a quiet Aberdeenshire accent, Murray explained that he was looking for a yarn to match the tartan with which to make Rosa Pomar’s Pelica Vest. The kilt’s perfect pleats were complete with original straps, buckles and a hand sewn lining. “No” he said, “It’s not new. I’ve had it since I was a teenager. But I almost never wear it anymore.”
We picked out a number of different blues and narrowed it down to a beautifully heathered slatey shade of Brusca and he left with enough yarn for the waistcoat and a distinct twinkle in his shy smile.

A few weeks later, on a similarly sunny Saturday, a different knitter came in with a different kilt. This guy spoke with a South African accent, explaining that he too wanted to make a waistcoat to match a kilt that his partner’s mother had given him. His tartan was altogether brighter than Murray’s – green with overlapping window panes of oranges and yellows. It was more difficult to find the right match this time but we got there in the end.

“Do you mind if I ask you what the occasion is for these waistcoats?” I said before he left. “It’s just that the other guy from the knit night came in the other week to get wool to match his kilt too.”

“No, I mean, Yes, I mean of course it’s fine ask.” he said with a big grin. “We’re getting married!”

2 Knit-Night regulars, 2 kilts, 2 waistcoat knitting projects and now a wedding. This sounded like a story I needed to know more about.
Luckily for all of us, they showed up again for the August knit night just in time to explain..

Ollie begins with their almost filmic meet-cute. “Our profiles matched, but I thought he looked far too wholesome so I never messaged him.”
But apparently real life had other plans, and after recognising Murray as they cycled past each other 3 times on the same day (!), Ollie thought that maybe he could embrace wholesome afterall.
Murray grins bashfully as Ollie was plainly delighting in telling this bit of the story.

Murray goes onto explain that at the time, he was working as an aspiring wildlife conservationist in a lab that was doing research into Merino sheep (of course it was Merino sheep!), and when he eventually left the lab for a new job, he was given a load of beautiful merino wool which his manager had had specially spun from the fleece of the lab’s flock. With the help of some YouTube videos and the remnants of a childhood memory of how to knit, he made himself a hotwater bottle cover. ‘I was obsessed with that hotwater bottle cover,’ explains Ollie. Obviously he was going to have to learn to knit as well.

We speed through the next few years – long walks in the Oxfordshire countryside collecting fleece, driving back from Cornwall fantasising about setting up a yarn company, changing jobs, moving to east London, and through it all they were still both knitting.

“There is something about our relationship and yarn and knitting that felt like it went so well together. If you go back into the process of making something, it’s like making a space in the world. The sense of community and building your identity as queer people with other people in your chosen family. There’s a way with knitting in which you take a single thread and turn it into a 3 dimensional object: As you transform the thing, you’re imbuing it with your intention, you’re changing something from being quite ordinary into something that’s very special – with your vision attached to it.. It becomes like magic. I think it’s really cool and kind of queer aswell because there are almost no rules.”

It dawns on me that this deliberateness is the really important bit. Whatever serendipity takes you there in the first place – a chance encounter as you cycle past each other on a Cambridge roundabout, or the unexpected gift of some wool, the knitted stitch is not blown into place by a random gust of wind. You have to choose to make it.

And the wasitcoats? Ollie’s vest never quite made it to the wedding – something about the orange wool coupled with. the green kilt putting him in mind of a carrot. Murray did wear his – no small feat if you remember how hot it was in August.

“It’s the knitted stitch,” says Ollie. “It will always carry a trace of the moment you created it.”

With immense gratitude to Ollie and Murray for sharing their beautiful story and huge love and congratulations to you both, from us all.