On the phone with my girlfriend last fall, I noticed a distracting, rhythmic clicking noise in the background that was punctuating our conversation. “I think something’s wrong with your phone,” I said. “Don’t you hear that sound?” “Oh, sorry, it’s my knitting needles,” she said. “I’m making a sweater.”
It was hard for me to picture this. The only person I’d ever known who knit was my grandmother. Making sweaters had always seemed a quaint, fusty activity—along the lines of stamp collecting and decorating gingerbread houses. But my girlfriend was nothing like my grandma; she was a super-chic producer who hung out with rock musicians and gourmet chefs, dressed in leggings and ankle boots, and lived on one of the hippest blocks in New York’s East Village. If she’d taken up knitting, well…something about knitting had changed. Somehow, knitting had become cool.
Sure enough, I started seeing evidence of this as I made my usual city rounds. Heading for coffee in the swanky neighborhood of SoHo, I passed by a yarn shop I’d never seen before; a group of young, fashionable-looking gals were gathered inside at tables, purling away. Riding to work on the subway a few weeks later, I saw an ad in an issue of Bust (one of my favorite magazines) for a knitter’s handbook called Stitch ’n Bitch. A quick Web search when I got home revealed dozens of knitting blogs—most of them written by young women, who had handles like YarnHarlot, ChicKnits, and InsubordiKnit. What the hell was going on? What was this knitting resurgence about?
I decided to ask Charlene Garrett, the manager of a cheerful downtown Manhattan knit shop and café, Knit New York. Since her shop opened in 2003, she said, business has been booming.
“Young people today are looking for new ways to relax and be creative,” Garrett told me. “They’re so busy, and they’re used to just running into stores and buying things. But then they come in here and find they can turn a piece of yarn into a beautiful garment that they can give to their father or their sister…there’s a lot of satisfaction in that.”
A woman named Tiffany, who takes knitting classes at Garrett’s shop, agreed. “When I made my first scarf, I realized when I was done that buying a scarf in a store might have been cheaper,” she told me. “But it was something I’d made; I’d picked the color and the wool and done it just the way I wanted. Nobody else was going to be wearing the same thing.
“Also,” Tiffany continued, “it was just really fun to educate myself…you know, in one of the ‘womanly arts’.”
According to Garrett, though, knitting isn’t just appealing to women these days. “Men are definitely a presence around here,” she said of her shop. “Guys attend classes, and I have a guy on staff to connect with male customers.”
My hip producer friend says the new influx of guy knitters is just an added perk of the hobby. In fact, she just told me the other day about a “gorgeous male artist” she met at a party, who was wearing a hat he’d made himself.
“He said his mom had taught him,” my friend effused. “Isn’t that hot?”
I guess it is.
