The other day I overheard a young woman huffily defend herself: “It’s not like I sit around knitting all day.”Of course not–because only grandmotherly types do that, right? Wrong. These days, knitting is the hobby of choice among many urban, professional women. Physicians are doing it, accountants are doing it, Web designers are doing it. Julia Roberts does it, for pete’s sake.
In cities from New York to San Francisco, knitting is the newest version of the book club. Women are gathering on a regular basis to drink wine, dish and, well, make some socks.
“I don’t think knitting has ever been as popular as it is now,” says Mary Wobbekind, 52, owner of the Weaving Workshop in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
These newfangled knitters are not rocking-chair-bound; more commonly, they have cleaning services and they don’t necessarily know how to bake.
“People are very surprised when I tell them I knit,” says Leslie Maria, a 29-year-old corporate attorney in Boston. “A lot of my friends think it’s hilarious. I don’t think it’s as much because I’m young, but because I’m pretty high-energy and don’t really have the soft, sweet, nurturing personality that I think people associate with the grandma knitter.”
Maria is in good company. According to the Knitting Guild of America, based in Lexington, Ky., a new brand of knitter is rapidly taking shape. “We’re seeing a lot of interest–especially among working women in their 20s and 30s,” says Brenda Sparks, the guild’s membership coordinator.
In fact, in the past year, the association’s membership has grown by nearly 50 percent, Sparks says. The guild’s annual conference, which met March 21-25 in Branson, Mo., lured about 375 attendees.
It’s not surprising that so many professional women are discovering knitting–considering how meditative it can be (Sparks calls it “mind-therapy”), and how busy today’s women are.
Wobbekind says that most of the women who sign up for her classes are seeking an antidote to their fast-paced, technology-laden lives.
“I don’t see the stress and tension and automation of our daily lives lessening,” she says, “so I don’t think interest in knitting will either.”
Thirty-four-year-old Brenda Janish is one of those women Wobbekind describes. A Web designer in Chicago, Janish began knitting when work became stressful and she felt she “needed a release.”
“I think more young women are [knitting] because they are leading more stressful lives, spending more time at the office, spending more years without having children, and really need a creative release in their lives,” she says. “After a really stressful day at work, one hour of knitting in front of the television makes me relax and forget whatever was making me so anxious and upset when I left work.”
Janish decided that knitting would be even more fun if she could share it with other women. Last September, she founded a club called Stich ‘n’ Bitch (www.stitchnbitch.org), which meets every Tuesday night at a coffee shop on Chicago’s North Side.
Most people, she says, come to unwind and recharge.
That’s why Martha Thomases knits. In fact, the managing director and “spin queen” of the New York City PR firm Geek Factory says that knitting is the perfect corrective to the fast-paced business world. (Incidentally, she swears that knitting goes especially well with “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”)
“Since we’re a PR firm that specializes in technology and entertainment, we find knitting to be a change of pace, more tactile than cerebral,” Thomases says, adding that she has recruited five co-workers to join her knitting circle. The bonus, she says, is that knitting in the company kitchen or conference room “helps with brainstorming.”
Stitch ‘n’ Bitch member Sharon Rodney, a 30-year-old account supervisor in the Chicago office of global communications firm Citigate, tries to explain the restorative effects of knitting: “It’s sort of like meditation for me. Someone last night said it was like playing [the computer game] Tetris–addictive, challenging and calming at the same time. I thought that was hilarious,” she says.
Indeed, the repetition and focus knitting requires is just the therapy many women say they need–regardless of the reason they need the therapy in the first place.
Maria, for instance, claims that knitting is the perfect solution for a fearful flier. “It requires enough concentration that you don’t think about dropping out of the sky in a fiery explosion,” she explains. (Caveat: Kelly Shriver Kolln, a 30-year-old Chicago knitter, cautions that metal knitting needles may provoke another type of fear on planes: “I sometimes get funny looks–like I could puncture something important.”)
Do-it-yourself wardrobe
Those knitters who aren’t seeking a therapeutic outlet are usually seeking a creative outlet.
“I think people want to be creative, but don’t have the skills–or, perhaps more important, the time and money to develop the skills–to be a painter or musician,” says New York-based Anna Stancioff, 24, who works in public relations for international destinations and luxury hotels and resorts. “I’m not an artist, but I am creative. Knitting is a fairly easy thing to learn.”
Janish, who initially took up knitting to make inexpensive gifts for her nieces and nephews, realized she craves the satisfaction of making something.
“I loved the planning and thought it required, the creativity in combining yarn and pattern. And I loved the feeling I got when I gave the gift to its recipient,” she says. “Everyone is always so impressed with knitted gifts, and I know they will always be cherished.”
Besides gifts for other people, you can make gorgeous stuff to hang in your own closet.
According to The Knitting Guild’s Sparks, the types of knitting patterns available are becoming increasingly sophisticated and chic–a trend mimicking the knitted clothes being strutted down the runway. From sweaters and shawls to tank tops and bikinis, all types of garments are now being knitted–in luxurious yarns like mohair, cashmere, alpaca and silk.
The ability to make designer copies yourself–at a fraction of the cost (if you don’t count labor), is highly tempting in a world in which, as Stancioff says, “everything is processed and prepackaged.”
Rodney began knitting two years ago when trendy knit apparel started appearing in stores. “I was seeing cool knit things in stores–like the long sweater-coat–and wanted to make these things myself,” she says.
Novella Carpenter, a 28-year-old assistant editor for the Seattle-based publisher Sasquatch Books, attributes knitting’s popularity to people’s concern about the origins of their clothes. “The first step is thrifting for your clothes–who would actually go to The Gap and buy stuff new? Then after a while you start wondering what you can make with your own hands,” says Carpenter, who belongs to a knitting club of women ages 22 to 35. “Going to a knitting store, not only is the yarn gorgeous, you get stories about the yarn–where it came from, who made it, and how. It’s a holistic approach to scarf-wearing.”
Stigma, schmigma
Despite knitting’s growing popularity, most knitters doubt it will ever lose its grandma-stigma. Most of them couldn’t care less.
“In a way, it’s almost empowering to enjoy something that’s typically seen as unhip or boring,” Stancioff says. “Everyone has some dorky habit . . . and it’s better than stamp collecting.”
Janish says that she started knitting exactly because it is such an unusual habit for young women. “I think the fact that it was against the status quo attracted me to it,” she says. “I like getting strange looks and inquisitive smiles from people when I knit in public, or mention casually that I knit in my spare time.”
Speaking of strange looks, Lara Neel got a lot of them while at a shopping center one day. Neel–a recent graduate who started a knitting club at Amherst College in Massachusetts–was knitting as she walked around the mall with a friend, shopping.
“Every single salesclerk looked at me with surprise, but also interest and respect,” she says. “I think most people don’t realize how rewarding and easy knitting really is, so it’s less of a stigma and more of an anomaly. Like if you woke up in the morning to find that your roommate had been knighted. There’s nothing wrong with being knighted, you just didn’t know that people did that anymore.”
Stitch ‘n’ bond
Regardless of why one starts knitting–you can’t sleep, you can’t paint, you want a new wardrobe–knitting clubs are a great excuse for a little female bonding.
Janish thinks that part of the reason Stitch ‘n’ Bitch already has nearly 50 members is the companionship offered by the group.
“I like that I’m able to hang out with women my age and knit with them,” she says. “These are all women I’m glad to know. We have things in common outside of knitting. They are all incredibly bright, most are single, many are in the Web biz like me. It’s networking, in a way. While men are making deals on the golf course, we’re making deals in knitting circles.”
For Stancioff, the knitting club is less about networking, more about dishing.
“None of us is really creating any modern knitwear miracles, but it’s an opportunity to visit and relax and sit around,” she says. “Being all between the ages of 24-26, we spend our time gossiping and eating, and usually nursing one or two or four hangovers.”
If you ask one observer, knitting clubs are too much about gossip, not enough about knitting. Peter (last name withheld for fear of retribution by female roommate) is a 28-year-old fixed income trader in New York City, whose female roommate holds knitting circles in their apartment.
“In a gray area that lies between the commitment of having a group dinner at a table, and a noisy meeting at a bar, is the knitting circle,” he says. “Why knitting? Because book clubs were becoming too common and people began to realize that they really weren’t reading the books anyway.”
Peter’s roommate has held 10 meetings, which he says have yielded little knitting progress. Instead, he says, members spend their time discussing men and failed relationships.
“Next year it will be home pottery or maybe even bonsai tree pruning,” he says. “Women want to talk about their lives and if it was called an `unload your worries, problems and fears group,’ that would feel too institutional and they might be compelled to pay each other.”
