Hobbies: The Big Stitch

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They look big enough to brain the butcher and turn their users into Lilliputians, but jumbo-sized needles, oil inch in diameter, are the biggest knitting news in years. Reason is that the big stitches they produce have cut the time it takes to knit a dress to six hours or less. "Anyone can use them," says their inventor, Jeanne Damon, 40, a onetime commercial artist, abstract painter and freelance knitwear designer. And if the resulting dresses are practically see-throughs, this is no drawback in the age of the body stocking.

Boston's Jeanne Damon happened on the idea a year ago, when as a volunteer art teacher to a class of emotionally disturbed children she thought of knitting as a way to hold their interest. To make it both more fun and easier, she provided them with whittled-down broomsticks. The children loved them. Sure that she was on to a good idea, she convinced New York's Reynolds Yarns Co. To make hollow inch-wide needles of aluminum. When it turned out that the new needles made it easy to blend up to six yarns at once, she had no trouble in persuading Reynolds to produce "Jumbo Jets" commercially.

First marketed two months ago at $2.95 a pair (or in kits complete with yarn and patterns that cost from $18 to $50), "Jumbo Jets" are being sold in 25 department stores and 1,500 knit shops throughout the nation. Chicago's Marshall Field sold 3,000 pairs of them last month; Gimbel's Pittsburgh store sold 1,200 pairs in a single day. Says Helena Stockwell, owner of the Knit Shop in Highland Park, III.: "They've gotten us a lot of new customers, and old customers who haven't knitted for ages are taking it up again."