The Current - Why Gen Z is picking up their grandma’s hobbies

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Knitting isn’t just for grannies anymore. From quilting to pickling to crocheting, “grandma hobbies” are making a comeback, especially among Gen Z. Clinical psychologist and therapeutic knitting instructor Mia Hobbs explains why these old-fashioned pastimes soothe the nervous system, help people unplug, and may even rewire our brains for better mental health.

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Certain conditions apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. So you're going to go in from the front to the back, around, under, off. In, around, under, which is where you're making that new stitch, and then you're just throwing the old one off. Okay. So we'll do it together side by side, okay? And you don't, it'll feel like wrestling out an octopus for the first little while, and then you'll start.

to get it. A first lesson in knitting, casting on. Maybe your mother or your grandmother taught you how knitting, crocheting, and other hobbies like baking, quilting, and pickling, they're all making a comeback and getting a lot of attention now on social media as grandma hobbies. Young people are embracing these activities for the nostalgia and the opportunity to craft and relax away from screens. Every Thursday, Unwind Yarn House in New Market, Ontario, hosts a knit social. Hi, I'm Millie. I'm 13 years old. I wanted to join the club because I like to do crafts and I wanted to do it with other people. My mom knits a lot and it looked cool, so I thought I would try it. And it's a fun hobby to do. It's a thing that people say, like, it's a grandma hobby. But I think it's more than that.

Like, anybody can do it. It doesn't really matter who you are or how old you are. I think it's a good idea for people my age. A lot of them spend too much time on screens and I think they need a break and it's like better from like fast fashion. It's more sustainable project. My name's Abby and I'm 17 years old. I made the sweater I'm wearing. I've just kind of gotten into crocheting in the past few years. I've also, I like doing like little stuffed animal sort of things for my friends. They always love them because it's kind of just like a nice stuffed creature. It's a nice thing to do when I'm, like, sitting at my desk or just, like, if we're watching a movie sort of thing, I have trouble sitting still, so it's something I can do with my hands. That's one of the reasons why I picked it up, kind of just as, like, a quiet time activity.

I'm Violet, and I'm 15. I come with my mom. It's, like, a thing we do together. We get drinks before we come, and then we'll come crochet and knit. It's calming. Like, it's very, like, routine, I guess. Like, you just do. similar stitches and then you follow your pattern and it's nice. My mom learned when she was younger, now I'm learning, and some of my friends want to learn, so I try to teach them. I'm Ruby and I'm 13. Well, my mom, she taught me how to crochet, and then I just crocheted like a million scrunchies, like over and over again.

I like seeing the finished product, but I don't see that a lot because I have like 10 million projects. It's like really fun. Instead of just like scrolling on like Instagram, sometimes my friends will be like, oh, do you want to hang out on Thursday? And I'll like, no, I'm going to knit with some old ladies. Mia Hobbs is a clinical psychologist who incorporates knitting into her therapy. She's also the host of the podcast, Why I Knit. Mia, hello.

Hi. What do you think when you hear those teenage knitters? I love to hear teenage knitters. I think they're saying some of very similar things. to the, you know, all of the guests that I've interviewed on my podcast. But I love to hear, you know, younger generation getting into knitting. And I think it reflects what the kids in my school-based groups would say about what attracts them to knitting and crochet.

How often are you seeing younger people take up this activity? Well, I guess the ones I'm seeing, I'm kind of introducing it to them often. So I've got my own group in a local primary school, which is with kind of 10, 11, year olds and also in my therapy practice I work with teenagers and we're always I always kind of introduce the idea of knitting with all my therapy clients even though we might not do any together we might think about similar hobbies that might give them a similar kind of feeling to knitting if they're not you know interested or in a place in their life where they're I don't know in a position to learn something new that might be a bit challenging at the beginning like

they mentioned about wrestling an octopus, you know, it's important to remember it is a bit challenging at the beginning. Those of us who've been doing it a long time can forget that there was a wrestling the octopus phase. Does it take a bit of convincing to bring this into a group of people, young people, and be like, yeah, we're going to do this.

This is great. I haven't found, I mean, some, definitely there are some skeptics and I don't tend to try and convince people. I kind of tell them why I think knitting can be beneficial for our mental health, so about having something to kind of focus our attention on, having something physical that gives us a sense of achievement, which is unlike, you know, this group of people who've grown up in this digital world, they often have less experiences of kind of real tangible physical progress that they can see.

So I think that's something that really attracts people to knitting, young and older, the idea of really being able to see your progress. So I think we can, if people are not interested in knitting, we think about other things that might give you a similar feeling. Baking is a good example, so often that feels a bit more accessible, maybe less stigmatized or less gendered perhaps. And yeah, and then maybe that gives you some of the similar things that knitting might. Why do activities such as this, grandma hobbies, as some people call them now,

why do they work in therapy? Well, so knitting, I think, is particularly well suited for it, because knitting is something we can do in really tiny increments. So most people can learn to knit, you know, relatively easily in a few sessions that might last, you know, half an hour or shorter. You can do a basic knit stitch. And there are really only two stitches, a knit and a pearl in knitting. And you can make lots of things without ever learning the pearl stitch.

So it's quite easy for most people to pick up. And the other thing is, if you think about the type of people I'm meeting in therapy, they might be struggling with anxiety or low mood. They might struggle with lots of things and feel overwhelmed easily. And the idea of having something that you can pick up and do just five minutes of is really helpful. Particularly with teenagers, many of them are anxious about things that involve leaving the house or involve other teenagers. They might feel, you know, worried or anxious about what people think. Knitting is something you do alone compared to like thinking about trying to get someone into a sports club or something.

there are many more challenges with that you have to go for at least an hour there'll be other people there looking at you whereas knitting you could do even in your bed you know some people on my podcast have spoken about feeling so depressed they can't leave their bed they can do knitting in their bed and they could do just five minutes every day or every few days or once a week and still make progress towards whatever it is they're making and many people who are struggling with low mood find it really helpful to be able to see that they can achieve something when they might feel like they're failing in other areas of their life. What does the science say around just five minutes? You've talked about that for a while and how that impacts and helps our brain and nervous systems when we're in those low periods? I think what we know about our nervous systems is that we like soothing, rhythmical, repetitive motion. So we know, like, for example, we will rock a baby to sleep. So we know that our nervous systems are soothed by repetitive kind of calming movements. And lots of people, talk about feeling calm. People email me all the time and say they've, you know, their doctor has measured, reduced blood pressure when they've been knitting. And I think the most

important thing about suggesting things to benefit our mental health is to make them actually doable. I think it's lots of us know the things we should do for positive mental health, you know, getting some exercise, going outside every day. But actually, a lot of those things are quite hard to do, whereas what's great is with knitting, you can do it in tiny increments. That makes it more manageable. And then often if we do something that gives us a sense of achievement in those five minutes, that boosts our kind of motivation to do the next thing. Then we might think, okay, I've knitted for five minutes in my bed. That makes me feel good because I've added a row to my scarf. Then I might feel able to have a shower that day. So it

kind of builds up in a positive spiral. And knitting is ideal for that because it's so small and easy and portable. We are gathered here today to celebrate life's big milestones. Do you promise to stand together through home purchases, auto upgrades, and surprise dense and dings? We do. To embrace life's big moments for any adorable co-drivers down the road. We do.

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from those social interactions that you might need. I think lots of people are attracted to knitting because it's one of the few things they can do at a particular period in their life. So, for example, on my podcast, I've interviewed people struggling with chronic illness who've been confined to their bed or their house. for long periods and there aren't many things they can do or people who are struggling with their mental health. Often new mothers after having a baby want to do something for themselves to feel creative or to feel like they're doing anything that is connected to the former

version of them that isn't just serving the needs of keeping a tiny human alive and knitting fits really well into those small spaces that we have. But I think the benefit of like this younger generation is that whereas I was a teenager or person, in their early 20s knitting, I didn't know there were other people like me out there in the world. I thought I was the only kind of slightly unusual person who was knitting the night before an exam because I felt it helped me keep calm. Whereas nowadays, it can become a more social activity really because you can share your makes online and you can connect with other kniters of your age or who were interested in knitting the things you knit online. And I think

that can, I don't know, boost our motivation because you can see someone else. like you, you know, on the other side of the world, making something cool and that inspires you to keep going with your hobby. So I think lots of other people have talked about. It does bring social connection. It's something that comes up in all the research about knitting is one of the benefits, really. And when did you realize, like, did you have a particular time in your life where knitting helped you mentally? Like, did you realize this is actually helping me in more ways than I first realized? Yeah, I think it took me longer than I, you know, it's an embarrassingly long time really to realise that it was helpful for my own mental well-being. So I'd knitted a bit

as a child, my mum knitted. But when I started my doctorate in clinical psychology, my mum said to me, you need to learn to knit because she'd met someone who'd done the same course and they'd learned to bricklay because they really needed to do something that was unrelated to psychology. So she said, you know, you need to learn to knit. And I just did it to kind of please her, really. And I took home some yarn and some needles. And at the time we were studying, for example, and it was such a great way of having a short 10 minute break in my revision. And I felt like it was really using a different part of my brain, completely different to kind of all of the statistics

and the psychological kind of theories I was learning and trying to cram into my brain. This was kind of just moving my hands. And it felt like it really gave my brain a rest because I did have to focus on the movements at that point. So I think that, and that's something I often, that's a time I bring it up in therapy, is when people talk about having a really busy brain

or they're overthinking or they're stuck with kind of ruminating about negative things, but I said that's the sign we need to get out of our heads and into our hands and we need to start bring our attention, you know, in a mindful way into what we're doing with our bodies. And that's much easier when you've got a kind of physical action to hook it to. So something like knitting that takes a bit of focus. Baking would be similar because you have to follow a recipe and weigh things out.

and it's harder to ruminate about negative things if you're having to focus on what you're doing. You offer an audio course called self-care one stitch at a time. What's the gist of that? So that is a course for knitters to help them really think about intentionally using their knitting as part of their self-care. So we talk about things like mindfulness, we talk about how you choose your knitting project. because many of us who are experienced kniters will, I don't know, scroll Instagram, see a beautiful cardigan and think, right, I'm going to knit that. And it's very common that you might get carried away and cast on too many things at once and not get around to finishing them. And we can all get into traps, you know, the same unhelpful traps we can all fall into in our lives that might come up and bite us like perfectionism.

So this is a way of really leaning into using your knitting practice to benefit your self-care and choosing your next project. really mindfully. So really thinking about what do I need for my self-care right now? You know, if you imagine somebody who's in their life who's got a really busy life, maybe they've got kids and a really busy job, they might be feeling completely overwhelmed. They might need a really simple, rhythmical knitting project where they don't have to follow a pattern. And casting on something really complicated where you have to look at a pattern for every row is going to be completely the wrong thing for them at that point in their life. Whereas somebody else might really want something very taxing so that they can switch off from their job.

And I think it's all about not judging ourselves, but leaning into using our knitting deliberately to focus on what we need for ourselves. It reminds me a little of, you know, a few years ago, adult coloring books became really popular. And I think it's kind of the same thing. You're focused on this, you know, something that's seemingly completely disconnected from your other part of your life and you can just focus on something that's kind of childlike and enjoyable. Who do you think benefits the most from taking up a hobby like that, like baking, like knitting, like coloring, woodworking, all of those things? I mean, I think there's place for all

of us to have a kind of creative hobby. And I love that idea of play. I think it's really important for all of us to have a kind of field of our life that's a bit like a playground where you can make mistakes, you can experiment with different colors. And if it turns out that they don't look great together, it's okay because it's just a colouring book or a knitting project. And with knitting, the great thing is you can unravel it. So I think anyone can benefit from having that creative expression and that we know that, you know, things like using colour can give us a mood boost if we're working with colours that kind of light us up and give us a, make a smile. And I think there's something out there for everybody really. I think the people who mostly can benefit from it

are people who I often bring it up when people have very busy brains and find it hard to switch them off. And the things we think are rest, like sitting down, watching TV or, I don't know, lying in your bed and trying to relax. Often, you know, doing nothing isn't as relaxing as we think it is and then we can end up feeling like there's something wrong with me. I can't switch off. But often we have to have a form of kind of, I call it active relaxation. So giving your brain a different and pleasant task to work on that isn't too taxing, that just brings your focus into the present moment, because we all know mindfulness, which is, you know, our awareness of our attention is good for our brains. So having something to bring your attention to

in the here and now is really beneficial for all of us. And that does feel resting for our brains. I love it. Okay, Mia Hobbs, thank you very much for this. You're so welcome. Mia Hobbs is a clinical psychologist. She offers, therapeutic knitting classes and hosts the podcasts Why I Knit. She is in London, England. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.