Journalist Humeara Mohamed is a big advocate of crocheting. "The allure comes and goes in waves, but when it hits, I’m seldom without a hook and a ball of yarn," she writes.
"If I've got five minutes at a bus stop, I whip out the crochet. If I'm sitting in front of the TV, the crochet is in my lap, fingers whizzing between stitches. Out for dinner? You guessed it—the crochet is coming with, for those slow moments between ordering and receiving food."
Mohamed says her husband doesn't get it, but there's something about keeping her fingers busy and having a physical representation of her hard work that calms her down. "Crocheting helps me to feel less 'feral squirrel' and more 'cool cucumber' during stressful times, and it's helped me to navigate feelings of overwhelm," the woman explains.
And it's precisely the craft's healing abilities that hooked her from the beginning. "I've been taking anxiety medication for the past decade, combined with therapy and trying to pick up mindful habits. This is the reason I started knitting and crocheting in the first place, in a bid to quieten my mind and keep myself from spiraling," Mohamed says.
As an added bonus, it also prevents her from mindlessly scrolling for extended periods of time.
As an anxious person, Mohamed says she has an ever-present feeling of uncertainty, and crocheting helps to combat it.
The whole process is very rhythmic and gives her a sense of control that reduces those feelings.
"I also procrastinate when I’m exhausted, and then I feel guilty because I have nothing to show for my time. By incorporating crochet into my daily life, it offers me some time-out time, which means I’m less exhausted in general, but it also gives me something physical (and pretty!) to show for my time when I’m not working. It makes me feel less guilty," the hobbyist adds.
For a more quantifiable take on the craft, we can look at the study titled Happy Hookers, conducted by researchers Pippa Burns and Rosemary Van Der Meer and published in Perspectives in Public Health in 2020.
This international survey aimed to investigate the potential mental health benefits of crochet more deeply and was distributed over six weeks, gathering responses from 8,391 individuals across 87 countries.
The demographic profile of the respondents was predominantly female (99.1%), with nearly half (49.5%) aged between 41 and 60 years. A significant portion (42.6%) had been crocheting for 1 to 5 years. Echoing Mohamed's personal experience, the three most common reasons for engaging in crochet were to express creativity (82.1%), to relax (78.5%), and to achieve a sense of accomplishment (75.2%).
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The study found that crochet had a positive impact on participants' emotional states. Before engaging in crochet, the average mood score was 4.19 (on a scale of 1 to 7), which increased to 5.78 after.
Qualitative analysis of open-ended responses revealed five key themes: health benefits, the process of crochet, personal connection, crochet as contribution, and online crochet communities.
Participants described using crochet to manage mental health conditions, cope with grief, and alleviate chronic pain. The repetitive nature of crochet was also mentioned, as were the global online crochet communities (for their social support and sense of belonging, enhancing the overall therapeutic experience).
While people aren't saying crocheting will fix your life, it might just help you stitch your problems together.
