Penguins 'knitting lady' finds her zen during Stanley Cup Final

Fretting about the Stanley Cup Final?

Try taking a page, or a stitch, out of Michelle Miller's playbook.

Miller has been knitting at Pittsburgh Penguins game since 2007, gaining a following as a the "Pens Knitting Lady."

"I'm there to watch hockey, and I'm there to knit," said Miller, who broke one of her wooden knitting needles in the stands at PPG Paints Arena right before Chris Kunitz scored in the second overtime of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final, sending the Penguins back to the Stanley Cup Final.

"I was on my feet, knitting," Miller said. "I was grabbing my needles so hard."

Knitting calms her, Miller said. Studies have shown repetitive crafts like knitting or crocheting can put people in a meditative state. It can help lower blood pressure and reduce stress.

Miller, 44, of Crownsville, Md., which is a four-hour drive from Pittsburgh, joked that her husband used to leave games with one good ear from all her yelling. Losses would throw her into a tailspin for days. Then she started knitting.

"Being able to knit makes me a better fan," Miller said.

Knitting helps keep Miller focused on the game, she said. She doesn't need to look down at her fingers. And if her fingers are busy working the needles, her mind is free to concentrate on the game.

Once, when a puck went over the glass near the bench, Miller watched as the players, coaches, trainers and fans sitting in the front rows flinched. Miller, eyes trained in the puck, didn't.

"I reached out and grabbed it," she said. "When I'm knitting and watching the game, I'm so much more focused on the game."

Miller uses thin yarn — fingering or laceweight — and wooden size 2 needles that are duller and smaller than chopsticks. If she knits for the whole game, she can add between 4,800 to 7,200 stitches, but that's only about four to six rows of the shawl she's working on.

"That shawl will go on for quite sometime," Miller said.

Miller is working on the shawl, a pair of socks, a blanket for her niece and about 50 to 70 other projects right now. Iceburgh, the Penguins' mascot, just asked her for a new scarf, so she might start on that, too.

"I'm not a monogamous knitter," Miller said. "There's a project for every temperament, emotion, TV mood, everything."

She'll knit something a little more complicated if she's watching the game at home. She knits while she watches television shows and movies. She knits if she's stuck in a long line at the grocery store checkout.

But knitting at hockey games has made her famous. She has more than 4,000 Twitter followers who know her as @PensKnittngLady . She landed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

"I got famous because I knit at hockey games," Miller said.

Even she recognizes how ridiculous that sounds.

Miller has her detractors.

People on Twitter deride her for not paying attention, for being bored, for wasting good seats. She's not. She's not. She's not. Stitch after stitch, she's watching.

Plus, "You're not the fan police," Miller said.

She says her knitting is less distracting than someone staring at a phone, eating a hot dog or grabbing a beer. She doesn't drink during games, doesn't eat and isn't on her phone. She knits.

Miller encouraged anyone looking to calm their nerves to take up knitting. She wouldn't recommend trying to learn during a game. Your project could end up like that one time a Washington Capitals fan — beers in both hands — snagged her yarn on his foot as he walked down the stands. It was all tangled and dirty from the floor. She had to throw the yarn away.

"Not everyone can do it during a hockey game," Miller said. "It just happens to work for me."

Miller and her husband, Michael Miller, who tweets at @PensRyourDaddy , couldn't make it to Game 1 and weren't be there for Game 2 of the Final. But if it goes to a Game 5, they hope to be there.

Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com, 412-336-8448 or via Twitter @tinynotebook.