Many knitters pooh-pooh the notion that since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have been "cocooning" and pursuing crafts in the safety of their duct-taped basements.
"It's way more than that," said Michael del Vecchio, 26, of the District. "People are searching for people to be with. It's kind of funny -- you think of old ladies knitting by the fire with their cats, but now, it's really about a thriving community with other people."
Stitch DC opened in June on 8th Street SE. The shop offers classes as well as supplies.
(Marie Connolly, Stitch Dc)
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Del Vecchio, who works for the nonprofit Americans for the Arts and teaches knitting at Knit and Stitch in Bethesda on weekends, was a charter member of a knitting circle that met at Sparky's restaurant in Logan Circle. The group, once mostly men, has expanded and now meets at a local Caribou Coffee as well.
Anne L. MacDonald, the retired head of the history department at the National Cathedral School and perhaps the nation's only historian of knitting, buys the theory that knitting could reflect a need for belonging.
"I went to a knitting convention and I noticed people who didn't know each other pouring out their lives to each other," she said. "It was remarkable."
But MacDonald also notes that knitting is, ultimately, a practical and productive thing.
"People want to do something with their hands," she said. "That's what it was back when I was younger and knitting. You don't want to just sit and talk or watch TV. . . . Here is something you can do that is portable and useful."
Her social history of American knitting, "No Idle Hands," takes its text from the proverb "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop." From colonial times, when knitting was a required chore, through modern times, when mass-produced garments made home knitting unnecessary, MacDonald said, knitting has been seen as a useful occupation, the antidote to laziness.
Genia Planck, a Crownsville, Md., mother of four and knitting teacher who works at yarn shops in Fells Point and Annapolis, said her younger knitting students would agree with MacDonald. They tell her, "I needed something to do beside Pilates, lunch dates and late-night television."
But Planck also relishes her own knitting community, which she says has grown exponentially in the past decade. She is part of a four-year-old knitting group at Savory Cafe in Takoma Park, and delights in the twenty-somethings and grandmas who meet in Fells Point every week to knit and talk.
Speaking of grandmas, Mary Colucci, executive director of the Craft Yarn Council of America, offers this reason for the boomers' return to knitting: "Babies! When the first grandchildren come along, the grandmothers want to make something special."
