Canon City – Six women dressed in identical hospital scrubs gather at the edge of a room that looks like an elementary school gymnasium.
They are focused on loops of yarn moving from one knitting needle to the other, stopping occasionally to confer about a complicated pattern or how to correct a dropped stitch. They murmur quietly, maybe laugh a little.
In any other context, this little knot of gals nattering over their needles would be just another group of friends filling a coffee break with handiwork and happy talk.
But this is Cañon City and the needles clicking through soft yarns are being handled by people housed in Colorado’s highest-security women’s prison.
For about 18 months, Colorado Women’s Correctional Facility inmates with good behavior records have been knitting: swatches to prove proficiency; scarves; vests; sweaters; tiny baby socks and caps; stylish capelets; and, occasionally, a poncho. They follow ready-made patterns to the letter or make up their own.
“I love this,” says Alice Randle, 45, who used to work in the prison kitchen and, until it was eliminated, a computer-refurbishing lab. Knitting is “something I always wanted to do. It’s so much fun, it’s become an addiction, but it’s a good addiction. It’s something I want to teach my grandbabies, something to be able to pass on to them.”
Randle and five other women work full time creating garments used to show off hand-dyed yarns made by Interlacements in Colorado Springs.
They are employed by Colorado Correctional Industries, but their work is supervised by Interlacements co-owner Judy Ditmore and her friend, Pat Anda. The women come to the prison at least twice a month to teach skills that will eventually help the inmates obtain meaningful work once they are released.
The knitters typically earn $70 to $90 a month, compared with the $13.50 inmates earn doing jobs like cleaning or cooking. As they get better and better, the knitters are tested and receive certifications to help them prove their skills to future employers.
Another 35 inmates who work elsewhere in the prison knit at night in their cells. In all, about 80 of the prison’s 225 inmates have taken Ditmore’s beginning knitting classes.
In the program are some of Colorado’s most high-profile convicts. Jennifer Reali, serving a life sentence for the 1990 murder of her lover’s wife, and Lisl Auman, jailed for her role in the 1997 murder of police officer Bruce VanderJagt, are among Ditmore’s best recreational knitters.
But it wasn’t until last spring – when Auman was the subject of a 10-page article in Vanity Fair magazine co-written by Hunter S. Thompson – that Ditmore, 52, realized she was in the midst of Colorado’s most notorious female criminals.
“To me, (the convictions) are not who they are, it’s who they were,” Ditmore says. “If they are doing a job for me, communicating and enjoying themselves, and being creative, that’s what my program is all about.”
The inmates are not allowed to have scissors, so they cut yarn with nail clippers. They are allowed only a limited number of needles in their cells, checked out from the prison’s recreation program along with a pattern and yarn.
Knitters working on garments only may complete one panel at a time in their cells. Assembly of a sweater or jacket must be done under supervision.
“It could be considered escape paraphernalia,” says Karen Goff, a prison recreation officer. “They’re only allowed to have state-issued clothing.”
During one of her Tuesday visits to the prison, Ditmore asked an inmate to try on a completed garment, not thinking about the implications. “It was her size, not mine,” she says. “I thought the guard was going to have a heart attack.”
The knitting program is a great equalizer.
“I totally forget that the women are ‘inmates.’ The only thing that makes you think about that is when the officers say time to do this or that,” says Anda, 64, whose mother, May Gillespie, was warden when the women’s prison opened in 1968.
Were her mother alive to see the knitting program, Anda says she likely would be thrilled by the addition of more vocational programs in the prisons.
“When she went to work at the Territorial Prison, they did not have work programs for women,” Anda says. “Mom took her own sewing machine into the prison, and got a cosmetology program going. She felt it was extremely important to have something constructive to do.”
Ditmore says the feel of the women’s prison has changed since the knitting program started. As more inmates are certified to knit, more women meet in the day rooms on their units to stitch together.
“No matter where they go, they have a small community with something in common other than that they’re all offenders,” she says.
Luciana Dorsey, a 30-year-old who is seven years into a 10-year sentence for first-degree burglary, says the knitting program is helping her as she prepares for parole.
“I have a 7-year-old daughter who admires me for no reason,” Dorsey says. “I’m trying to give her a reason.”
Last week, for the first time since she started teaching beginning knitting at the prison, one of Anda’s students was released.
Although sad that she’ll probably never see the woman again, Anda is hopeful for her success on the streets. “She told me, ‘I love this knitting thing. I’m going to be doing this instead of what got me in trouble.’ That was very nice,” Anda says.
Bonnie Taylor, who is serving a life sentence, says knitting has helped her feel part of a group.
“I usually like to be to myself, but sitting with these women makes it different. It’s pretty nice. I do have the mind of an artistic person, but I wasn’t sure this was work for me,” says Taylor, 46. “It’s nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be. Too bad I had to come to prison to learn it.”
Staff writer Dana Coffield can be reached at 303-820-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com.
