Michael del Vecchio grew up in Killingworth, Conn., and came to Washington in 1996 to attend the George Washington University, where he studied French language and literature. He works for Americans for the Arts, an arts advocacy organization. His project, called Animating Democracy, explores how arts and civic engagement operate in the world. He is co-founder of MenKnit.net, an online resource for men who knit, and has recently published his first book, “Knitting With Balls: A Hands-on Guide to Knitting for the Modern Man” (DK, 2006).
How did you get started knitting?
I learned at a dinner party in 2001. I had a good friend, Charles, who really wanted to learn to knit. He invited over his friend Dawn Benedetto, a jeweler with a studio at the Torpedo Factory. She taught us her kind of bastardized knitting. She learned to knit in one day from a book and it was the blind leading the blind. She taught us how to cast on, how to knit and purl, and how to bind off, and that was it. The next day we went off to a wool shop called Aylin’s Woolgatherer [in Falls Church] and bought some yarn and got started from there.
Has helping men learn to knit, become comfortable doing so, and forming knitting groups become a mission for you?
I wouldn’t say necessarily a mission, but it’s definitely an interest and … an opportunity. When Dan Vera and I founded [MenKnit.net] we just wanted to get some visibility for men who knit. It’s generally more recently thought of as women’s work, but there are hundreds of thousands of men who knit in this country … often forgotten by people who knit or people who talk about it. The book is an opportunity to … get some support for men who like to knit or men who want to learn.
Back in the early 1970s, Rosey Grier, the football player, helped associate needlepoint with men. Are there male celebrities who knit?
There’s a suspicious picture of Russell Crowe holding knitting needles. It’s thought that [he] knits, but there are no actual facts that say that. Laurence Fishburne is a knitter, and I may have heard somewhere that David Arquette is. A lot of [moviestars] are becoming interested because it’s a good way to pass the time between takes.
Tell me about the inspiration for some of the more unusual projects in “Knitting with Balls.”
Two things were going through my head whileI was writing the book. One was that there aren’t a lot of patterns out there for guys. Typically, if you walk into a yarn shop, you’ll find kind of a unisex scarf, a unisex hat, a general, flat, easy stockinette stitch pullover. I really wanted to design things that were a little bit … out there; kind of unexpected for guys to make for themselves. That had to run the gamut of the beer cosy — which is a great skillbuilder; you learn these new techniques fast — to the laptop cover-which is practical. I wanted a nice balance of clever and interesting that would advance the techniques that are taught in the book. Because guys don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to making things, I wanted to offer a nice amount of choices: between yarns, between speed of completion, [between levels of technical difficulty].
Are you working on a new book?
Something new will probably be coming out in early spring of 2008.
It’s going to have a nice selection of styles; it will be more technique-based and include tips I’ve picked up along the way. It will take “Knitting With Balls” to the next level. I’m also doing a fair amount of teaching evenings and weekends at Knit Happens in Alexandria. I also travel and teach.
Where are your favorite Washington places to knit?
I love to sit in Dupont Circle and knit. I live near Logan Circle, so [it] is convenient. I host two knitting groups that meet in the city, at the Caribou at 14th and Rhode Island. It’s also fun to go to the Warehouse Theater downtown. But when I’m doing work, I do it at home.
