Knitting: the Newest Old Trend!

The latest fashion comeback that also benefits your health.

One of the biggest trends of 2019 is knitting, there are about a hundred cafes in London dedicated to knitting, crocheting and anything that can be possibly put together with needles and yarns.

This old trend commonly associated to grandmas is now very popular among a younger demographic, who choose to arm themselves with needles and hooks and undertake this new path.

Jenni Macleod,the head of brand and content at LoveCrafts Collective Ltd, says there are millions of people who visit their website to download knitting patterns and buy equipment:

“We have a market place where independent designers sell their patterns and apart from a 3% cut we take to cover costs of maintaining the platform, all the pattern sales go directly to the designers.”

There are three core customers for this market according to Jenni, and their ages range from early thirties to late sixties, they are very different from each other and have different budgets and tastes: the ones who are passionate crafters and shop frequently, the ones who look for the best offers to “make the most of their hobby on a tighter budget” and the ones who knit only when influenced by the latest trends.

Jenni added that people knit because of its health benefits: “the bilateral movement of knitting fires neurons all over your brain. The act of using both hands at once to make different movements stimulates a whole host of brain functions that scientists haven’t yet totally decoded.”

According to a survey of over 1,000 knitters completed by Knit for Peace, knitting has both mental and physical remunerations:

Knitting and doing crochet lowers blood pressure, reduces depression and anxiety, slows down the onset of dementia, distracts from chronic pain and is as relaxing as yoga!

This survey has also been backed up by a recent study carried out by the CNN in 2014, that proves the practice of knitting is beneficial to people affected with depression and anxiety.

Among all the participants to the test, who were all affected by clinical depression, 81% said that knitting or crocheting, even for a short time made them “very happy”.

According to the British Historic Kart Club, 4 million women in the UK are interested in knitting.

Nathalie Nguyen, 29-year-old digital PR, who’s been crocheting since she was a child says she knits to release the stress and take time to herself: “I knit to help reduce stress and because I love creating with my hands. When I was a kid, one of my aunts taught me crocheting during summer holidays. That’s how I’ve learnt the basics. I then started crocheting again 4 years ago, and I learnt more on YouTube or with books. It’s now a real passion of mine.”

For Nathalie knitting is “a kind of meditation” she says, but also an act of love in fact every Christmas she makes all her presents with her hands, giving her loved ones pieces of unique art.