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Pick up your needles and join the Cool Revolution!

In case you haven’t heard, knitting is the new cool. Fact. With thousands of ‘Knit and Natter’ crafting groups popping up all over the country and ‘Yarn Storming’ become a new craze, the age-old stereotype of knitting grandmothers in rocking chairs is long gone!

Crafting has become incredibly popular in recent years, with people, especially the younger generations, becoming interested in a handmade culture, and, of course, Yarn Storming! If you haven’t heard of Yarn Storming – where have you been?! Yarnstorming is the art of using graffiti knitting or crochet to enhance an object or public place, guerilla knitting, if you will. Just check out this Yarnstormed phone box in London, courtesy of Knit the City.

Yarnstorming

Need more evidence that knitting is uber cool? Just have a quick chat with the Sisters from the Shoreditch WI, possibly the coolest people you will ever meet! We asked them to give us a little insight into their fantastic knitting group and they very kindly obliged.

The Sisters told us their go-to for knitting and crochet patterns is the online knitting and crochet community, Ravelry. Free to join, this community offers a huge pattern database. We asked the Shoreditch WI to tell us exactly why knitting was so cool and Martha Wass told us it was “the ability to make anything out of a long strand of something” and we couldn’t agree more! Knitting has become an incredibly sociable pastime, with many of the Sisters telling us that their friends introduced them to the craft, Rebecca Baird told us that the same friend who taught her to knit also taught her to crochet, and she has “been hooked ever since.” (Haha)

It soon became apparent that some of the Sisters have completed extremely difficult projects in their knitting quests. We asked Kim Byrne what the most complicated knitting project she has every completed was, her answer? “A 5 piece beach hut draft excluder.” (!!!)

Jen has been a Shoreditch Sister for 4 years and she told us that “the Shoreditch Sisters' Knit'n'Natter group meets monthly and is a great social activity. We all get to chat and admire each other's projects. I also really like that you can make something truly unique that you wouldn't be able to buy elsewhere easily.” Jen is also no stranger to complicated knitting projects; the hardest thing she ever made was a blanket for her niece sporting a tree design that she managed to finish the very day her sister went into labour!! She also told us that she is “addicted to making hideous 70s novelty poodle wine bottle covers to give to friends as a joke.

Now, tell us knitting isn’t cool?!

For all of your knitting supplies, visit the Abakhan website.

The Shoreditch WI Knitting Group hold regular meetings, to find more details, visit their blog, here. To find out more about their latest campaign, Days for Girls, visit their dedicated Facebook page.