KNITTING AS A WAY OF LIFE
- Maribeth Theroux
- Oct 9
- 5 min read
Local business owner opens yarn shop, offers classes and community in Maplewood Village
By Maribeth Theroux
South Orange resident Kari Capone has worn many hats in her life, including music teacher, cafe owner, publishing professional and Etsy shop owner. Through it all, she has knit.
For Capone, knitting is business, knitting is community and knitting is fashion. More fundamental, though, is something else: knitting is survival.
“Knitting literally saves lives,” she says. “It saved mine.”
Before moving to SOMA, Capone was a music teacher in Madison. She taught at Central Avenue School and ran the school’s knitting club. When she was 28 years old, though, she began experiencing panic attacks. They became so severe that Capone was hospitalized.
During that experience, Capone was allowed to knit if she was sitting at the nurse’s station, where she and her knitting needles could be monitored. So when she talks about lives being saved through knitting, she means it. She explains how the repetitive movement of knitting promotes a mental calm. She used knitting as a “tether” as she moved from one chapter of her life to the next.
“It was a lifeline,” she says.
Now she’s celebrating the opening of the new physical location in Maplewood Village of her business, The Spinning Hand. The business has existed since 2007 as an Etsy shop. In person, it bursts with color, texture, light and most of all: Capone’s welcoming and generous spirit. The yarn shop also offers classes and an afterschool program for middle and high schoolers.
“It really has felt like a homecoming,” Capone says. She’s welcomed old friends and new ones, including some visitors who remember her from previous hats she’s worn, whether it be her two years running the Net Nomads internet cafe on Springfield Avenue, her time teaching Seth Boyden Elementary students how to knit or her time working weekends at Knitknack, a cafe and yarn shop that was also on Springfield Avenue and closed in 2015.
When Knitknack’s owners moved away and prepared to close shop, Capone made a $1,000 investment in inventory. With that yarn, she began selling beginner’s knitting kits through her Etsy shop. As time went on, she took business development and marketing classes online. All of these things gave Capone the confidence and the knowledge to arrive where she is today. “I thought, ‘Maybe I can really do this.’ ”
Capone has also given that sense of purpose and confidence to others. Hannah Winters, now 22, learned to knit from Capone when she attended Seth Boyden Elementary School. Winters and her friends would visit the school’s knitting corner after lunch instead of going outside for recess.“It was magical,” Winters says. “It was like an oasis.”
Hannah describes knitted pieces suspended from the ceiling and walls, creating a whimsical spot at the end of a school hallway where kids could choose to use their recess knitting with Kari Capone.
Today, Winters' interest in making things continues. She studied fashion design at Marist University and graduated this May. Her senior thesis even included some knitted pieces. “The knitting corner is where it all began,” Winters says.
Capone is offering an afterschool program on weekdays from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at her shop. A new generation will begin to learn to knit alongside her.
Capone made the transition to full-time business owner in 2021. The increased interest in knitting during the pandemic was a contributing factor, as well as the demand for a certain pink hat leading up to the Women’s March in 2017.
Capone has her sights set on even more. Her grand vision is to create a fiber arts center right here in Maplewood.
“A place where fiber artists can come for spinning, weaving and dyeing, as well as a mill that will produce our own in-house yarn from small flocks in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania,” she explains.
Capone says those smaller operations often struggle to compete against larger scale operations.
Generosity, care and thoughtfulness are weaved through everything Capone does. She’s thinking of her own business, and she’s also thinking about how to serve her community, her region and other businesses.
One such business is run by Ellen Seidman. In addition to Seidman’s full-time career as a journalist, she sells handpainted shells that serve as trinket dishes. When Seidman posted about her creative business venture in a local online group earlier this year, Seidman says that Capone was first to place an order.
“I’m so in awe of what she’s created in this community,” Seidman says. Capone offers Seidman’s handpainted shells in her knitting subscription boxes for knitters to use to hold stitch markers while working on their designs.
Capone readily talks about what knitting means to her, as well as what knitting can provide to anyone who picks up yarn and knitting needles: the chance to survive and the chance to thrive. To slow down. To meditate. To create a slip knot, begin casting on and simply stitch.
Capone is excited to join the ranks of businesses open above the previous Maplewood Theater. Her neighbors include Magnus Comics and Shisa Tattoo Studio, which also celebrated a recent opening.
Capone speaks of neighboring businesses with enthusiasm and care. Four of Capone’s new customers discovered her while stopping at Magnus. Comic book fans tend to appreciate art, crafting and makerspaces. Downstairs from The Spinning Hand, Roman Gourmet customers will see the handknit pepperoni pizza Capone gifted to owner Vinnie Loffredo.
In honor of their shared openings, Capone plans to receive her first ever tattoo from Shisa Tattoo Studio owner and tattoo artist Dave Lopez. Capone turns over one wrist to show the spot where she plans to get it: “A simple ball of yarn.”
Maribeth Theroux is a poet and comedian. She recently launched The SOMA Network, an organization devoted to creating and sharing local opportunities and access to the arts. She lives in South Orange with her husband, daughter and son. She is the proud maker of many rudimentary crocheted scarves.
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