And then after rehearsal, there’s… The Bent Spoon. Tucked into all the shopping on Palmer Square, The Bent Spoon has some of the most delish ice cream on the planet and they often use seasonal fruit from nearby Terhune Orchards. The classics are amazing, but it’s the weird stuff that really gets me: Dark Chocolate Earl Grey. Lavender Mascarpone. Ginger Chunk, Honeydew Sorbet. I brought a very discerning 80-something year-old fellow ice cream snob and she said over her scoop of Dark Chocolate Orange “I will be coming back here.”

In Tulsa OK, in my most recent production of Rigoletto, I found an amazing little place called, “Loops.”

After dropping the requisite and impossible to avoid load of money on the softest, funkiest, most luscious yarns ever, I turned around to find a group of amazing women chatting away on plush couches and dragging chairs over to an ever expanding circle. A little timid at first I asked if I could join them for a bit and their reaction was overwhelming. They invited me in squishing each other to fit another chair, offering me coffee, and even giving me a gift! They asked me all sorts of questions about who I was and before I knew it three hours whizzed by. What struck me about these women (and later, one lovely man – who, by the way, is an AMAZINGLY talented knitter and taught me a thing or twenty) is their warmth, openness, and kindness, even to a stranger. They were married, single, healing, healthy, grieving, glowing, working, and home bound, but they were all coming together at the end of the day for a few hours of sharing their lives, their work, their troubles, their joys, and their art.

The first day I went to the loops group was a tuesday night and there was a sweet, quiet, white haired lady sitting on the end of the couch. Is was subtly clear that she was the kitting equivalent of Yoda. All hail the master knitter. Numerous times in the evening someone would come to her with a question and very simply and quietly, she would demonstrate, ‘like that’. The light in the struggling knitters eyes was always brilliant. Being that struggling knitter more times than I can count, when someone explains something and you GET it – it’s like waking up from the nightmare where you show up to work naked, an realizing it didn’t really happen. I learned how to knit from Selma, Molly and Pearl. Molly was my grandmother, and Selma and Pearl were her cousins. On the top floor of their duplex in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Selma handed me knitting needles and pulled out a bottle of Kettle One vodka and said, “audrala, I want you to meet the blender” (pronounced, blenda). So, sucking down Piña Colada’s I learned how to knit, I was 13. You can see more on my website “about” page – www.mollyspurl.com – but after I was taught a few basics, Molly and Pearl died and Selma lived no where near me. I grew up in LA though most of the family was still in Brooklyn. When I finally moved to New York, Sel left for Florida, was it something I said? All to say, I lost my knitting gurus, and here, in Tulsa, at this little place called loops, 17 years later, there were tons of them, all with incredible knowledge to share. I was in heaven.

I kept going back to this particular group who made sure to tell me when they met, Tuesdays and Fridays, and I looked forward to it more than I can say. My colleagues invited me to a movie one night after a yoga class and I had to pass, because I didn’t want to miss my new group of friends. In some towns it’s easier than others to find a little space in their society to fit in and feel at home, but in Tulsa, I found a spot, and I made some inspiring new friends.