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When lockdown hit, I decided to forgo Zoom quizzes and banana bread and pick a new hobby instead: crochet. Not the usual pastime for a 24-year-old, you might think – but this penchant for Georgian diversions is now all the rage: cross-stitch kit sales are up 545 per cent at Hobbycraft with acrylic paints and canvases up 369 and 207 per cent respectively.
These Jane Austen-esque hobbies “have stood the test of time,” Katherine Paterson, customer director at Hobbycraft, says of their popularity boom, adding: “Throughout the pandemic we’ve seen increased demand for all things craft, but traditional crafts and those synonymous with the Regency era, such as needlework and art, are definitely the most popular.”
She also noted customers reporting the “escapism and the therapeutic nature of crafts such as embroidery and cross stitch… [which] helps them to switch off” – something I’ve found invaluable over the past 10 months. I was never much into crafts before, scraping a B in GCSE art and knitting with my grandmother when I was little, but – call it Regencycore, the Bridgerton effect or plain lockdown boredom – I decided my new hobby would be, well, an old one.
The idea came to me differently than it did Jane Austen, though: I was scrolling through Instagram one day when I spotted Baby Yoda, a character from Disney+’s The Mandalorian, everywhere. Everyone was obsessed with this adorable green alien, myself included, so when I saw a picture of a crocheted Baby Yoda it was love at first sight. I knew I wanted to make one and hoped that my childhood knitting experience might come in handy.
Since then, I’ve only become more crochet confident and have moved on to making everything from toys and hats to clothes. It definitely came in handy at Christmas, as I spent my December furiously making gifts for almost everyone I knew – with mums and grandmas across Wales, where I live, now sporting matching handmade berets.
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