“I wish somebody would pay me what they pay a psychologist,” says Mary-Ann Parisi, owner of the Knitter’s Niche yarn shop on Southport just north of Belmont. People’s personal problems have a way of getting tangled up in their handwork. One time a man came in and asked for help with a sweater he was knitting. Under Parisi’s questioning he admitted it was for an ex-girlfriend. When a woman tried to buy cashmere to make a sweater for a guy she’d gone on one date with, Parisi’s assistant Lauren Sanchez refused to sell it to her. Instead she passed on a maxim from a shrewder customer: Don’t make a sweater for the guy until you have the ring.
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When not dispensing relationship advice, Parisi sells yarn and needles, rewrites confusing patterns for customers, winds yarn into balls on a medieval-looking machine, knits merchandise to sell in the store, and helps beginners with their dropped stitches, twisted yarn overs, and general knitting-induced panic. The hard part is getting them to relax. She used to say: “It’s a new skill set. You’ve been at it for all of 30 minutes. If you bought a grand piano, that doesn’t mean you’re going to sit down and play like Van Cliburn.” Then as younger and younger people discovered knitting, no one knew who Van Cliburn was anymore. Now she says Elton John.
Her store is small and straightforwardly decorated. Skeins of yarn–bright and sober, coarse and downy–are heaped on bookshelves. Untidy sheaves of patterns stand in a magazine rack. But many customers come less for supplies than for Parisi’s expertise. On a Saturday afternoon, three or four of them huddle at the table in the back of the store, clutching their half-finished projects and waiting for her help. One woman is working on her first hat. Parisi studies it a while before saying, “Wait a second. Wait a second. You changed things in the middle.” She turns it over and points. “Look. You have a ridge and a valley, a ridge and a valley, and here you just have ridges. Dear God!”
There are, however, limits to Parisi’s generosity–as acquaintances who ask her to knit something for them find out. “Hats, socks, scarves–hell, I’ll even make you a little lap robe,” she says. “But I ain’t making you a sweater.”
