Ingenuity, creativity and daring

Small businesses grow out of D.C. knitters' talents

The knitting craze has produced new businesses as well as scarves in D.C. Here's a look at some of the entrepreneurs and artists behind them:

Marie Connolly

Like her husband, Connolly worked in real estate before becoming the Capitol's knitting queen. A knitter since childhood, she was forced to drive to feed her habit. "I think my husband got sick of me going out of town to shop for yarn," she says.

When a colleague whose lease deal had fallen through rang one day seeking help finding a tenant for some commercial space, Connolly says her husband told her: "Marie, I think this is your call."

The first Stitch DC store -- which opened on Capitol Hill's historic Barracks Row in 2004 -- has since spawned two siblings, one in Georgetown; the other in Chevy Chase. They are pocket-sized emporiums stuffed with an array of colors, textures.

The customers are as variegated as the fibers. Well-coiffed matrons mulling projects for the grandkids brush elbows with tattooed and pierced hipsters looking to felt a bag.

Connolly's previous retail experience was hardly extensive. "I worked at The Gap in high school," she says. She attributes her success to "pent-up demand."

Gretchen Frederick

A Loudoun County farmer and spinner whose skeins of wool are marked with the names of the sheep they came from, Frederick is now spinning, dying and selling the wool of other small local farmers every week at the Dupont Farmers' Market.

"We're trying to help small farmers survive," she says.

The lifestyle is Frederick's passion.

Customers who leave their email addresses in her notebook get lyrical missives like this one, complete with photos of the farm.

"So close to the Solstice... I love the fog,"Frederick writes. "This weather is helping me get in the holiday spirit. Damp and dark...just like December in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up. I hope you all are doing better at Holiday prep than I am. I’m heading out for some shopping in the rain this morning and then hurrying home to spin!"

Karida Collins and Hannah Six

Collins and Six met at the Georgetown Stitch DC, where Collins was working and Six was a customer.

Earlier this year, they started the Neighborhood Fiber Company. The plan: to create a series of new yarns and colorways named after Washington, D.C. neighborhoods.

Collins, 25, holds a master's degree in American studies from George Washington University and identifies herself as a "yarn ho" on her blog. She dyes the yarn in her 900-square-foot apartment.

Six, 43, a former newspaper reporter and the company's chief financial backer, re-stains it in her 500-square-foot studio. "My studio is the eat-in portion of the kitchen," says Six. She has also begun to spin some of the company's yarn.

Collins says they don't mind making do. "I like the idea of our being a cottage industry," she says.

Laurie Gonyea

Gonyea is a native of the Midwest where, she says, "everybody knits." When she moved from Detroit to D.C. with her husband, Don Gonyea, a White House correspondent with National Public Radio, she missed her circle of knitting friends.

So she started teaching some of her Washington friends to knit.

That has grown into a business called "Destination Knits." A former video producer and mother of two, Gonyea now teaches knitting and designs patterns. Several times a year, her company sponsors a knitting retreat.

The retreats include classes and meals. In the afternoon, knitters can ease their cramped fingers and shoulder muscles with a glass of wine and a massage."

"I think its really good therapy," Gonyea says of knitting. "People here are wound so tight. Knittig lets them get into a zone."

Jacqui Rose

Jacqui Rose decided to open her knitting store, Woolwinders, on her way back home from Austin, where she got stuck when the planes stopped flying on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I had a lot of drive time," she said.

After 27 years on the road as a corporate executive, she decided to cocoon in retail. "I was turning 50. I had been married five years," she said.

Her husband, Lew, was game. ("He didn't say, up those meds," Rose jokes). A lawyer, he pitched in at the store when Rose was started out, and even learned to knit so he could provide better advice to customers.

Rose's homey store, in Rockville, hosts classes and salons, and customers generally find something to nosh on the table when they arrive. On a recent Sunday, it was mini-pumpkin pies from the supermarket across the street.