Hunter Wilson/Daily NewsDottie Longobardo, of Bowling Green, knits at Crafty Hands on Monday.

Freud had the couch. Starla Williams and company have their knitting needles.

The knitters who gather each Monday at Williams’ Bowling Green shop, Crafty Hands, make sweaters and caps for local charities such as the Barren River Area Safe Space women’s shelter and the Camp for Courageous Kids, a nonprofit in Scottsville that provides a recreational facility for seriously ill children.

The charity work itself is rewarding, all agree, but they are hard pressed to say just who gets more out of the group – those who benefit from their kindness, or the ladies themselves.

On a frigid, gray January day when most are snuggled by the fire for a snow day, the tiny and endlessly energetic Williams dashes around the shop giving knitting tips, taking inventory of lush yarns and waiting on customers, like a colorful butterfly in a homemade green sweater darting from one bloom to the next as her name is called by students with questions.

Knitter Dottie Longobardo has brought homemade biscotti, and the aroma of fresh coffee fills the store along with cheerful chatter. Talk about retail therapy.

Williams supplies all of the materials and the volunteers give their time. Workers filter in and out all day, some working for an hour, some for the entire morning or afternoon. Last year, volunteers donated 25 sweaters to BRASS. This year, they will make about 50 to 60 caps for the camp. At one point on this day, there were about 15 volunteers knitting.

Anyone can come and all are welcome. There is just one rule, according to volunteer Carolyn Gentry, a retired Bowling Green teacher: “You can come in a bad mood but you can’t leave in one.” The draw is social as much as altruistic, Gentry added.

What has grown out of this circle of volunteers is a support community for Bowling Green women of all ages.

On the day before she was to return to Boston University, 20-year-old Lizzie Whetstone was getting started on a project to take back to school. Knitting helps her relax, she said, a skill the political science and international studies major finds useful sitting in airports or de-stressing during exams.

By teaching her to knit, mom Patti Whetstone, an assistant professor in the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences at Western Kentucky University, said she is teaching her daughter a skill that brings lifelong gratification. Studies have, in fact, shown that knitting is not only relaxing and restorative, but has therapeutic value.

Whetstone, who moved to Bowling Green a year and a half ago from Wyoming for her job, found herself 1,400 miles from home in a totally foreign place where she knew no one. With her three children in college, the empty-nester and rookie knitter got lonely. Then she found the knitting shop.

“I want to give whatever I can of my time,” she said, “but I really come here for the community. This is my family of choice. Everyone is so welcoming and the atmosphere is so self-affirming. I look at a project and wonder if I can do it, then they tell me: ‘Of course you can because we can and we are here to help you.’ ”

For a time, she felt so alone that she was not sure she even wanted to remain in Kentucky. “Each week, I told myself that if I stayed in Kentucky until the end of the week, I could go knit,” she said. Whetstone’s home in Wyoming didn’t sell for a long time either, adding to her stress.

“The tension in my yarn was so tight,” she says, chuckling. “Then the house finally sold and the tension in my knitting just completely relaxed. I’m addicted.” She has turned on other stressed-out professors to the group now, too.

So are Leanne Armstrong and teenage daughter Lydia, who were sharing a bonding experience under the approving eye of table partner Sandra Coker, of Bowling Green. “You are doing really well there,” Coker told Lydia Armstrong, who spent the last three months knitting 13 Christmas presents to give away to friends and family.

“She is teaching me,” Leanne Armstrong said. “And she’s ready to get back to her own projects now. After doing so much for others, January is selfish month.”

Leanne Armstrong pulled out a turquoise cowl on circular needles and a new ball of yarn, asking Williams to show her how to incorporate it into her work. Williams loosens the ends, then deftly spits into her own hand in a move that is somehow very ladylike and laughs, rubbing the ends of the two balls of yarn together in her palms until they merge flawlessly into one piece.

“Spit and spin,” she says. “We promote spitting here!”

Williams praises the Armstrong ladies’ growing skill, adding that knitting is often good for the soul. Williams and her knitters all know one another on a first name basis and if a stranger walks in, they don’t leave a stranger. That is due in large part to Williams herself, a vibrant, funny and often irreverent woman who tells it like it is – the Julia Child of knitting – and her ladies love her for it.

When Williams opened Crafty Hands in 1997, it was a way to get out of the house. The success of the business has almost been accidental, she said. Charity Knitting, held every Monday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., was started to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the shop.

“The Bowling Green community has been so supportive, it was time to give back,” said Williams, who learned to knit on her seventh birthday from her grandmother.

Her grandmothers were very inspirational in her life, she said, predicting that she would end up with a career doing something with her “crafty hands.”

“The shop is about so much more than just knitting now,” Williams said. “There is a real sense of community and support here.”