Sticking the landing - with knitting needles

New Berlin - Cameras flashing and people cheering at feats of athleticism usually surround champion Olympic gymnast Chellsie Memmel.

But last week in New Berlin, the West Allis resident was surrounded by the click of knitting needles in the hands 37 fellow knitters, and she could hardly be happier.

Memmel took time out of her demanding training training schedule to grab some needles and help the knitting group at the ProHealth Care Regency Senior Community of New Berlin, 13750 W. National Ave., with their project.

They are making scarves for all Wisconsin athletes and coaches to wear at the Special Olympics.

"It's a very cool and nice thing they're doing," Memmel said. "Being an athlete, I know it's nice when the community supports you."

Enjoying a quiet moment

Memmel is more accustomed to jetting all over the world to compete with world-class athletes than sitting quietly in one place.

She helped boost the United States women's gymnastics team to a Silver Medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the U.S. team to gold at the World Championships in California in 2003. She also won an individual all-around gold in 2005 in the World Championships in Melbourne, Australia.

Currently she is working her way back from a shoulder injury following a recent surgery in the hopes of competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

But knitting is something the 23-year-old said she really likes.

"It's cool to see something forming," said Memmel, who learned to knit with the rest of the national gymnastics team from one of the coaches about six years ago. The half-dozen athletes on the team were facing long airplane rides to England and Switzerland and the coach thought knitting would be a good way to keep them occupied, Memmel said with a laugh.

And it was. Memmel kept it up sporadically for a while, but picked it up again this year and is working on a couple of scarves. When she visited the knitting group, Memmel worked on a scarf that was already in progress.

Sitting around doing something that's usually perceived as something more mature folks do has attracted some good-natured ribbing from other gymnasts.

"They say something like, 'Really?' " Memmel said.

Knitting their cares away

But despite the occasional razzing, her favorite times to pick up her knitting needles are on planes and at the end of intense training days at the gymnastics training camps in Houston.

Knitting takes your mind off things, Memmel said, and gives a sense of peace.

That peace transcends generations, said Jean Pedersen, 81.

Pederson, a member of the Regency knitting group, has been knitting since she was a teenager.

"It's relaxing to me," she said. "I knit anytime I'm uptight," Pedersen said. "You don't think seniors are that way, but we do get way busy, sometimes."

Pedersen, who has lived at the Regency for six years, isn't surprised that Memmel knits despite her youth. Memmel does so much traveling, Pedersen said.

However, Pedersen started knitting for a different reason as she a teenager in West Allis. She wanted some bobby socks, all the fashion rage at the time, and her family didn't have the money to buy them. So, if young Jean wanted them she had to knit them herself.

Now some 60 years later, she's still knitting and helping the Regency group create baby blankets, hats, booties for newborns at St. Francis Hospital, Milwaukee, to wear home.

"It's a joy," she said.

Honored guest

Also a joy was having Memmel join the group for a while.

"It was exciting for us, I hadn't seen Chellsie in many years," said Pedersen who said she recalled seeing Chellsie doing flips on the sidewalk at the tender age of 3.