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Hand Made Beauty - As Featured in..... | ||||||
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| Take, for instance, Frank Zappa's daughter, Diva, who's about to begin selling her homespun goods online. "My specialty is the poncho, which can also be a skirt," says the actress. Diva Zappa is the last person you'd expect to find shopping for yarn at knit cafe. Yet, despite her hot pink and orange hair - last week it was blue - and her rock-royalty lineage, the youngest offspring of Frank Zappa would rather spend her time whipping up a multicolored poncho than anything else. "I look like I should be a crazy drug addict, but, really, all I do is knit, drink tea and play with my kitties," says the actress who plays Babs in the upcoming film "Pledge This!" "I'm like a 97-year-old woman trapped in a 27-year-old's body." Zappa is part of a new and well-chronicled generation that's embracing a hobby once relegated to the sampler set. And these days, young knitters are finding a growing number of new places to gather, knitting cafes. From Los Angeles - where Zappa shops at the appropriately named Knit Cafe on Melrose Avenue - to downtown New York and everywhere in between, women are meeting like-minded DIYers to hone their knits together over coffee and cake. And in the process they're creating a new social network. Some are taking it to even greater lengths, selling their handmade goods at independent stores and e-tailers. Zappa, for instance, just launched her own web site, DivaZappa.com, where she will soon be displaying and selling her hand-knit hats, scarves and ponchos for prices that start at $100. According to a 2004 survey conducted by the Craft Yarn Council of America, about 53 million women nationwide knit or crochet. Of those, 33 percent are in the 25 to 34-year-old demographic. "These knitting cafes reflect why this trend has mushroomed," says Mary Colucci, executive director of the CYCA. "Women today are also using them as a way to connect with each other." Suzan Mischer should know. In 2002 she opened Knit Cafe, coining the popular term and beginning the yarn store-cum-coffee shop trend. her first book, "Greetings from Knit Cafe," was released in May. "For my store, it's more about the knitting draw, than the cafe draw, but the more accommodating the shop can be makes it even nicer for people to get together," says Mischer. Currently, her store is home to about four groups that gather every week to sip cappuccino and share their knit-and-purl techniques. Many of those knitters, she says, have branched out to start their own mini businesses. "After I opened the store, I started a beginners class and one of the girls in it turned around and sold the scarf she had just made." Mischer says, "I don't know if it's just an impulse to sell or the fact that these knitters need to justify their expensive yarn purchases." On a recent Friday night in New York's West Village, a group of women who call themselves the Spiders - they all knit and have blogs on the web - are seated around a long farm table at the point, NYC, one of two knitting hangouts in Manhattan. There are 20 spiders in all, but on this particular evening, 11 of them have gathered at the cafe. Carrie Melago, a crime reporter for the New York Daily News, is crocheting a lacy sweater for her mother's birthday - which was in June. "She picked something complicated for me to make, so she understands that it's late," says Melago, 30, who began knitting and crocheting about six years ago. Marie Carney, 28, is an opera singer and paralegal who spins, dyes and sells her won yarn in her spare time. She has two wheels set up inside her brooklyn apartment, and last week launched brooklynhandspun.com, where she sells handmade skeins for $22 each. Some of Carney's creations can be purchased at The Point, NYC and she is in the process of wholesaling to other stores, too. Jessica Cary, a charity fund manager, just finished making herself a camisole out of cotton and Tencel yarn; she's now onto her next project, a hooded wool pullover that will be ready well before the season changes. "I always try to make something that's classic. If I want something trendy, I'll go to Forever 21," says Cary, 28, who also dyes her own yarn and sells it. "One of the best things about knitting is how I've met people that I've automatically connected with because we have this great thing to share." She adds, noting that she's met most of her friends through knitting. Helane Blumfield started knitting in 2000 to calm her nerves after 9/11 and opened The Point, NYC in March 2005. "Most New Yorkers live in small apartments, so my idea was to make the store like a living room, where they could come and hang out," says Blumfield, whose boutique will offer about six knitting classes this fall. "But I had no idea of the extent to which it would take. I love how so many women have found friendship in something they have in common.." Still, Blumfield admits that such camaraderie is just a small part of her store's business. When it comes down to it, her end goal, aside from selling yarn, is to share her passion for knitting. Or, as Zappa puts it, "The realization that what you just made was once a dangling piece of string is an amazing feeling." |
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Sarah Taylor |
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