Forget that itchy sweater from grandma or the handmade scarf that isn’t quite your style. While knitting and crocheting have long been thought of as old-time hobbies, more and more younger people are picking up their crocheting hooks and taking up this handmade art.
Faith Floyd, a 21-year-old student at MTSU, said her mom and grandma first tried to teach her to crochet when she was in middle school.
“It didn’t really work out so I stopped,” Floyd said. “I got aggravated because my blankets would look like a mermaid tail, so it didn’t work.”
Floyd said she decided to try again a few years later as a high school student, and this time she started making some progress with her crocheting after switching to a different yarn.
“I do like the thicker yarn, and I still kind of had the problem, but it was getting straighter,” she said.
“I guess over time I just kind of tried more and more,” Floyd added.
Floyd said as a college student, the amount of time she has to spend on her crocheting can vary significantly.
“During the semester I do it when I can,” she said. “We finished the second week in December and since then I have made about five blankets, so it is just doing it when you can.”
Floyd said a lot of people who don’t knit or crochet don’t realize how much time it can take to make one piece.
“For a bigger blanket that I make it takes between 30-40 hours,” she said.
While she has tried to teach her 15-year-old sister how to crochet, Floyd said it is difficult as a right-handed person to teach a left-handed person how to crochet.
“I guess I wish more younger people would take the time to appreciate and learn about these older hobbies that people look at and think, oh that is what my grandma does,” she said.
Eleven-year-old Emma Simpkins has a passion for making handmade items ranging from crochet stuffed animals and hats to hot chocolate bombs and keychains. The young entrepreneur even has a Facebook store where she sells her wares called No Knots Crochet and Crafts.
“My grandma does pillows and blankets and about three years ago she wanted to teach me how to crochet,” Simpkins said. “I tried it and my fingers were too small, but I came back like four months later and she wanted to teach me again and I guess I picked it up there.”
Simpkins said she just celebrated her Facebook store’s one-year anniversary last December. While she currently enjoys making items for her Facebook store, Simpkins said she would like to open her own Etsy store one day.
Amanda Simpkins said she tried to support her daughter’s ambitions by making sure she has the knowledge she needs to succeed in addition to helping her with ideas and making sure she has the supplies she needs.
“If she shows an interest in something, if she can’t teach herself I will sign her up for online classed through a platform that we use or try to find a way for her to learn whatever it is she is interested in,” Amanda Simpkins said.
The paid had recently gone shopping for supplies, where Simpkins spent $25 to create her handmade crafts.
“I kind of showed her how to figure up how many bracelets she could make out of that and divide it by what she spent and then multiply it by this to figure out how much she is making per hour so you know what to charge so you are not just buying it and making it and selling it and not really turning a profit,” Amanda Simpkins said.
Simpkins said while she enjoys making a variety of items, she thinks the most time-consuming items she makes are pairs of fingerless gloves.
Erika Mooneyham said she got her start crocheting 10 years ago as a 14-year-old high school student.
“I was a freshman in high school and I had to take a home health/ home economics class and my teacher had us crochet a blanket,” she said.
Mooneyham said she wishes she could remember her teacher’s name, because she would thank her, “a million times” for getting her started with crocheting.
“I learned from there and then I started Youtubing it,” she said.
Over the years Mooneyham learned to crochet a variety of items ranging from pieces of clothing to blankets and stuffed animals known as Amigurumi.
“I just started doing stuffed animals, these have been my favorite,” she said. “I started out with the blankets of course… so I went from making blankets to making beanies to making stuffed animals and pillows.”
Mooneyham said the stuffed animals are more difficult to crochet than a blanket or other more simple items.
