What’s better than a cuddly cashmere scarf or beanie? One made by a grandma. That’s why in 2015, Margaux Rousseau and Faustine Badrichani — two French millennials who had recently moved to New York — launched Wooln, a knitwear line made exclusively by local seniors. “As Europeans, honoring elders is a big part of our way of living,” says Rousseau, a knitter with a background in marketing. “We really want retired women to feel valued and needed.”
The company now employs nine New Yorkers over the age of 60 to knit hats, snoods and blankets at home on their own time, paying them $20 to $140 per item. The accessories, available at Wooln-NY.com, cost between $50 and $400. Here are four of Wooln’s star crafters’ stories.
-
The former beauty exec
Tamara Beckwith You may have seen Hollis Hillhouse in her West Village nabe on a yarn-bombed bike, or volunteering at Governors Island, where its famed chickens often wear her hand-knitted hats.
“Knitting [is] an art,” says Hillhouse. She learned about Wooln from a posting at the Greenwich House Senior Center and thought, “‘I’m knitting at home anyway. Now someone is going to pay me for it? Well, thank you!’ ”The retiree, who’s in her 60s, learned to knit from her grandmother some 50 years ago, but the hobby got serious when she used it as a way to relax when she was an executive at beauty company L’Occitane. Her Wooln gig doesn’t exactly pay the rent, she says, “but it’s something I do if I want to buy a fabulous new pair of shoes.”
-
The retired teacher
Velma Bascome Tamara Beckwith Velma Bascome was a “bored housewife” living in Europe when she bought a crafting magazine and “decided to [knit] something.” Three years later, the fast learner was back in New York — the 70-year-old lives in Clinton Hill — and writing pattern instructions for yarn companies. She learned about Wooln, she says, from her internist, who knows about Bascome’s passion for crafting.
The former high-school science and health teacher, who also has a knitting circle that makes hats for neonatal units and homeless shelters, says she knits “almost 24/7” as a matter of course.
“[It] keeps people off my back,” Bascome says, laughing. “I’ll tell my daughter, ‘I’m working and making money here, you fix dinner!’ ”
-
She flew the friendly skies
Tamara Beckwith Gloria Herman’s a born knitter. “I don’t remember anyone teaching me,” says the 70-year-old Roosevelt Island resident. “I’ve knitted since I was a little kid.”
As an adult, she says, she knitted for her three children in part to de-stress from her job as a flight attendant. When she retired five years ago, she felt unmoored, and reached out to Wooln after reading about it in a local paper. “I need the structure,” she says. “Plus, I like good yarns, and the yarns this company has are so wonderful.”
The yoga and Zumba enthusiast has six grandchildren, with No. 7 on the way. “One more individual to knit for!” she says.
-
The cake baker
Tamara Beckwith After a busted knee left baker Charmaine Jones immobile a year and a half ago, she came across a Wooln job posting on Craigslist. An experienced knitter, she remembers thinking, “How hard can it be?” The Harlem-based shop owner of Cake Diva reached out and was a good match. “I must have knit 100 hats in two and a half months,” she says.
Jones, who declines to give her age, taught herself to knit as a kid in Gary, Ind. (She looked it up in her parents’ World Book Encyclopedia, which had illustrated instructions.) Soon, she says, she was crafting hot pants and ruffled jumpsuits.
Though Jones is back baking cakes, she still knits hats for Wooln. “It’s fun,” she says, “and I love the little something on the side.”