Yes, a Warm, Fuzzy Place In Hollywood

By AMY WALLACE
LOS ANGELES

Judy Greer, an actress who most recently appeared in Spike Jone’s “Adaptation,” remembers the precise moment she discovered Knit Café. Her friend Monica Lee, an education consultant, had spotted the new yarn store late last summer while driving down Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. Ms. Lee couldn’t stop, so Ms. Greer was dispatched to investigate.

“I’m usually not working, so I went and did the first pass,” said Ms. Greer, 27, who had a strong reaction to the place. “I was like, I want to live here.” She called her friend Leigh Wetzel, a Web site manager and fellow knitter. Ms. Wetzel remembers her exact words: “I have very good news.”

What was so special about Knit Café? It was bright. It was streamlined. “Unlike other yarn stores, there’s yarn everywhere – which intellectually seems like it would be a good thing, “ Ms. Greer said. “But it’s yarn overload.” What made Knit Café really different, though, from most craft stores avid knitters usually rely on was how it felt inside. It was homey, in a sleek sort of way. It was welcoming. Everyone seemed to know one another’s name. And there was something else. “There was Susan,” Ms. Greer said.

Susan Mischer, a former vice president for specials and documentaries at CBS, is the owner of Knit Café, which opened last July. Her idea was to create a place not just to buy supplies, but to gather, to slow down, to sit and talk. “I joke that it’s become a halfway house for recovering movie executives and writers,” said Ms. Mischer, whose regulars include many who work in the entertainment industry. “But I just wanted to have a place where I had the music I loved, a cup of coffee and a relaxed, laid-back atmosphere.”

To understand the significance of what Ms. Mischer has created – to grasp why her most devoted customers spend six hours a day there on weekends – one must first know that Los Angeles can be a very isolating place to live. The main reason – too much time spent alone in a car traversing a sprawling city – is obvious, but still hard to remedy. Ask the women and men who frequent Knit Café though, and they will tell you they have found an oasis of old-fashioned, small-town “community” – something they appreciate even more now, when the nation is at war.

“I started knitting again after Sept. 11,” Elayne Josephs, who owns a travel agency, said one afternoon recently. She sat, winding a ball of yarn, in one of the five comfy chairs that make a circle in the middle of Knit Café. Two elegantly frosted layer cakes sat behind her on a countertop – free for the taking. Someone was making coffee. Beck’s latest CD played softly.

“It was subconscious,” she said. “You don’t realize at first that I’m doing this because….”

“But it’s pleasing,” said Ms. Josephs, who stumbled into Knit Café a few months ago while making a poncho for her granddaughter and was struck by its mellow ambience.
“You have a feeling of accomplishment of creating something and not just thinking about all the negative things. Here, your mind goes to knitting.”

And that, regulars say, provides an antidote not just to wartime worries, but to the go-go stresses of their high-powered jobs. “Everything seems to be about the goal today,” said Ms. Lee, who works as a consultant to the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Knitting is all process. All the pretenses and preconceptions are left at the door.”

The appeal of crafts in times of national stress has been seen before in the weeks after 911, arts-and-crafts stores nationwide reported a surge in sales, as Americans sought solace in the homespun. What is striking about Knit Café, in particular, is how it enables Los Angeles sophisticates to get in touch not just with their inner artists, but with one another.

Maybe Knit Café’s secret lies in its primary-color décor, which one regular, a literary agent named Sophy Holodnik said, “has almost a little preschool vibe.” Maybe it’s the funky-but-upscale neighborhood, which holds one of the city’s tiniest private schools (the Center for Early Education) across the street, a barbershop for A-list stars (the salon where Sally Hershberger cuts hair) out the back door, and one of the hottest new restaurants (Bastide) around the corner, on Melrose Place.

Definitely, part of the appeal is Ms. Mischer herself, a petite blonde with wire-rimmed glasses who describes herself as the store’s hostess.

It was eight years ago that Ms. Mischer quit her job at CBS to raise her two children full time. (Her husband, Don Mischer, produces large-scale events, like last year’s opening ceremonies at the Olympics in Salt Lake City.) A longtime knitter, she fantasized about a cozy spot where knitting was the backdrop and visitors could take it from there. When she opened Knit Café, little did she realize it would become a pit stop for some of the town’s grooviest players.

Many of the folks who write and produce the television shows “Friends” and “The Gilmore Girls” are regulars. Clients of Ms. Hershberger’s salon slide in through the back door – sometimes with foil and chemicals in their hair. Which perhaps helps explain why, whether you are packing chenille or Baby Cashmerino, knitting at Knit Café feels hip. Ms. Greer, who visits daily when she is not out of town on a movie set, may have something to do with that. The actress – knowing the mousy stigma that can attach to those who make their own woolen goods – has come up with a rule about knitting in public. “You can do it, but only if you look really hot,” she said. “If we’re all fuddy-duddied out and we’re sitting around knitting, it’s a problem.”

Devi Vallabhaneni, 33, moved to Los Angeles from Chicago two years ago to start a company from scratch. She knew no one, and was working such long hours at first that she wasn’t meeting anyone. Then, a month after Knit Café opened, she wandered in.
There in the knitting circle, she met Matthew Vanlooeurwen, a makeup artist who paints Sheryl Crow’s face, and Tracy Cunningham, a hair colorist. She met Valerie Van Galder, a movie marketing executive at Sony Pictures who is happiest when following a mind-bendingly complicated pattern, and Lori Lober, an executive producer of television commercials whose willingness to help other knitters in distress has earned her the grateful nickname “the Queen.” One weekend recently, Ms. Vallabhaneni confided to her new friends that Knit Café, where they were sitting at the time, had transformed her experience of Los Angeles.

“It’s corny to say, but it feels like ‘Cheers,’ said Ms. Vallabhaneni, who like most knitters is currently working on several projects at once, including five pairs of socks. “It’s like the Welcome Wagon. I go in to buy one more skein of yarn, and it forces me to have a life.”
If she wishes to, she can live most of that life at Knit Café. The stores acerbic manager, Jess Pforzheimer, a former agent, quit that business two years ago to knit full time. “My mental growth after leaving the film business is fantastic,” he said, adding that he feels more creatively engaged than he did managing clients’ film careers.

He feels it’s important that the store stay open seven days a week (including most holidays), so he volunteered to work on Sundays. But that’s still not enough for some people. This year, when the store closed on New Year’s Day, seven Knit Café regulars ended up at Ms. Lober’s house, needles and yarn in tow.

Ms. Lober is not only an expert knitter, she is something of a knitting philosopher who has read up on the concept of crafts as spiritual practice. She went on a silent knitting retreat once and believes in the rhythmic repetition of the art form makes people communicate better. “People volunteer personal insights, and those are met in a loving spirit because everybody’s zoned out knitting,” said Ms. Lober, who is currently making commercials for Microsoft.

It was Ms. Mischer’s birthday last week, and to celebrate she invited Knit Café’s regulars to her home for a party. The entertainment for the evening was self-generated – which is to say the 15 guests came prepared to learn how to knit fingerless gloves. Ms. Lober was teaching, and there had been a homework assignment: you were supposed to have knit your cuffs in advance.

After several mojitos and a lot of Cuban food, the knitters got down to business. Ben Spector, a development director for a French filmmaker, was the first to drop a stitch, and he wasn’t shy about his confusion. “What if you lose count of how many stitches you’ve cast on?” he asked. Ms. Lober was reassuring: “I promise you, by the time you guys get to the second finger it’s all going to make sense.”

Ms. Greer said she had been knitting a lot on the set of a new television pilot, “Dicks,” about four friends who become private investigators. “I’m sorry I’m knitting so fast,” she said, not entirely sincerely.

“Showoff!” said Mr. Vanleeuwen, who had come straight form “The Tonight Show” where he had made up Marisa Tomei. As Ms. Lober walked them through the pattern, everyone stared intently at their needles, including Ms. Mischer, who admitted that her glove’s thumb hole looked as if she had knit it upside down.

“The next time,” Ms. Mischer said quietly, “we should do this before we start drinking.” For a moment, the only sound was the soft, rhythmic clicking of needle upon needle. Then everybody looked up, caught one another’s eyes, and laughed.