Published in the Asbury Park Press 06/27/04
GAUGING LIFE Knitting is the hobby that changed Dori Kershner's life
ANDREA CLURFELD/STAFF WRITER
You've seen them - on the trains to New York, in the stands at sporting events, in the waiting areas of doctors' offices, auto-repair shops and Applebee's. They're armed but not dangerous. They're focused but calm. They're the only people in any situation who aren't tapping their feet and referring constantly to their watches.
They're the knitters, a burgeoning segment of our society, and they're practicing a craft, some say an art form, that last saw a boom around World War II.
Dorian Kershner is one of them. Call her Dori, please. Everyone does who walks into Wooly Monmouth, her month-old shop in Red Bank that quickly has become knitters' central at the Shore. She's 29, adorable and stylishly dressed in whatever she's last clicked together.
"Dori's Speedy Gonzalez with the yarn," says longtime friend Nicole Chiafullo, of Red Bank. "She knits so fast!"
"Not that fast," Dori replies.
"Yes, that fast," Nicole insists.
"Well, after seven years," Dori says, "I guess you could call it my thing.
Knitting for Dori Kershner, you see, is "meditation in motion."
It was the hobby that changed her life, top to bottom. It was the pastime that propelled her life forward.
"Knitting allowed me to start my own business while still in my 20s," says Dori, who lives in Middletown.
Now, she's putting that business to good use by teaching others ways to ditch bad habits while stitching up something beautiful and useful.
Is there a down side to knitting?
No.
Perhaps what's why you've been seeing so many knitters around.
It was 1997, and Dori's grandmother was in the hospital. Dori, sitting at her bedside, asked, "Hey, could you show me the knit stitch?"
"That's the basic stitch," Dori explains. "So I made my first thing out of some junky cotton yarn. I felt so comfortable knitting."
So comfortable that she found a yarn shop near her then-home in Highland Park and stocked up. She knit during her grandmother's recuperation at home, she knit during her commute to her job with a financial software company in New York and she knit whenever she could free up her hands.
"I was a commuting knitter. I even knit a whole sweater during my corporate training process," Dori says, laughing.
She started teaching knitting, finding ties at a shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side called the Yarn Company. She worked full time at the software company and part time at the Yarn Company.
Then came the attacks on the World Trade Center.
"After 9/11, knitting got very big," Dori says. "But the economy was not big. More people started to knit to relieve stress, to do something comforting."
Dori's knitting career picked up. After a while, her priorities became clear.
"I was sort of figuring out at the software company that there just weren't the opportunities there," she says. "And I was knitting and teaching knitting at the same time. Eventually, the knitting won out."
In the middle of 2002, she signed up for a course through the Entrepreneurial Training Institute (ETA), an arm of the state Economic Development Authority. The course, taught by business experts both active and retired, took place during eight weeks in Lakewood.
"It cost $300," she says. "The best $300 I've ever spent."
Dori wrote a business plan during that course and presented it to her panel of teachers who worked to hook her up with, well, money.
"What they do is matchmaking, really. They give you a matchmaking plan."
Meanwhile, in March 2003, she quit her job at the software company and started working full time at the Yarn Company, learning how to connect with suppliers, sales reps and other sources of the best yarns. The money-match the ETA worked to make for her was heaven-sent and, after a little more than a year of planning, she opened Wooly Monmouth.
Dori is not your ordinary businesswoman. She's open till 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and until 8:30 p.m. every Wednesday to catch the after-work knitters who want to shop for yarn or sit at her huge wooden work table to knit and pick up pointers. There's a bottle of wine open, some cheese and lots of conversation.
Sharon Bergholm of Red Bank pops her head in Wooly Monmouth. Her husband, Joe, hangs back.
"I just like the way your store looks," Sharon says to Dori.
"Men are allowed in here," shouts out Nicole Chiafullo from behind her needles.
Joe Bergholm takes a few steps inside.
"You all need to keep knitting," he says, taking a look around.
Sharon's interest is already piqued. She touches a ball of yarn and says to Dori, "Well, maybe I could do it, if you can tell me how to do something easy."
"Most things are easy," Dori says. "The back of a sweater really is a square."
Sharon smiles. "Maybe a vest for me?"
Squares come easy, so it follows that evening bags and pillows, scarves and belts are novice-knitter projects. Fact is, knitting is so simple and so relaxing, many private schools are teaching it as part of their curriculum, Dori says. At Wooly Monmouth, Dori is teaching a class for kids ages 8 to 12 from 4 to 6 p.m. tomorrow. She'll have more classes for kids all summer.
Some of her adult students have taken up knitting as a form of behavior modification.
"I'm teaching reformed smokers, people coming out of a bad relationship, those who want to stay away from food while watching TV - people who want to keep busy while breaking bad habits," Dori says. `I often think, `Oh, I want a snack,' but then I'll say to myself, `Do 10 rows first,' and by that time, the urge has passed. There are a lot of people who took up smoking in college and now that they're out, they want to break the habit, so they knit. Plus cigarettes are so expensive: If you quit smoking, you can pay for enough yarn for a sweater with one week's worth of cigarettes!"
Mark Chesley of Long Branch and Sharone Sabalowsky of Asbury Park walk into Wooly Monmouth. Mark's the button man, so he heads to the back of the shop, where Dori stocks her terribly chic collection of buttons. Sharone's in for mohair.
"I still have the first sweater I ever made," Sharone says as she scouts for anything chartreuse. "It's a raglan-sleeve pullover. Royal blue raglan. That's not easy to make."
Dori nods.
"Dori," Sharone notes, "is my new yarn supplier. I love her (late) hours. It's so much more convenient."
Dori brings out new skeins of mohair. Sharone's entranced.
"I used to commute on the train and knit all the time," Sharone says. "The conductors called me `The Knit Wit.'"
Dori giggles. Mark, scanning buttons, grins. Soon, they're all exchanging kniting stories and chuckling.
You just know it won't be long before Dori Kershner has everyone in stitches.
* Wooly Monmouth is at 9 Monmouth St. in Red Bank.
Phone: (732) 224-YARN (9276).
The store is open from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and from 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays.
E-mail address is: info@woolymonmouth.com
