Why knitting, puzzles, coloring and other old-fashioned hobbies are finding their way back into our very online lives.
It all started in 2020 when Covid hit - all of a sudden all of your friends started baking bread or crocheting tiny little animals. We were forced to stay inside and there is only so much one can do to fill up their day outside of Zoom meetings and family feuds.
But what started as a way to keep us sane turned out to lead to a new wave of retro hobbies. The kind our grandmas had, although, to be honest, I am sure what we now consider a grandma hobby was a necessity for them - they knitted a sweater not because they were bored, but because clothing was expensive and making it themselves was cheaper.
Today we don’t knit, garden or color because it is cheaper - we do it because we gravitate towards hobbies that decompress us after a long and tiring day. Our minds are constantly buzzing, we have the word productivity practically engraved into our brains, we weren’t made to be productive every waking minute. It’s why you see people talking about grandmacore, cozy games and cottagecore on Pinterest and TikTok.
Everyone has their thing
Some let it out on the dance floor, at the gym or on the gravel. For those of us who are more of a homebody type, I’ve found we like to do things with our hands. Whether it’s cooking, knitting, doing embroidery on old T-shirts or finishing a puzzle on a Friday night - the feeling of seeing the finished result is the ultimate reward.
Maybe that’s part of the appeal. So much of what we do today never really feels finished. Our to-do lists keep getting longer, the inbox is always full and our scrolls are infinite. But knitting always has that final loop and the puzzle is only finished when the final piece is added.
It’s one of the reasons I also love coloring in Lake. To be completely transparent, I have the privilege of working for Lake and although I never thought I would find coloring something I would gravitate to off the clock, I actually came to love it.
I have absolutely zero patience for knitting or crocheting (one school project for my daughter was enough, trust me), but puzzles and coloring - that I can do. Lake is a coloring app available on iPhone and iPad. It has over 2,000 coloring pages from 150 independent artists from all over the world - I liked that even before I started working here. I can always find something to color, depending on my mood, energy and the time I have, while knowing that what I color is hand-drawn by a real artist and not AI. But more than anything, I like that it gives me something to do when I want to switch off without just picking up my phone and scrolling.
My Kind of Cozy
Did my grandma ever color for fun? Probably not. She was too busy kneading bread for the whole family - again, something she did not do as a hobby. So I wouldn’t technically put Lake into that grandma hobby basket, but you get the picture. Coloring is one of those cozy hobbies where all you need is your iPad and Apple Pencil charged, teacup filled and a blanket keeping you warm. Also Gilmore Girls running on TV if you’re my co-worker.
Human creativity has a funny way of surviving change. From lockdowns and new technologies to shifting habits, we might change how and why we create, but we always seem to return to making something with our own hands. Maybe that’s why these old-fashioned hobbies keep returning to us. How we do them might change, but our need to create something never really does.
And if cozy coloring sounds like your kind of thing, you can give Lake a try here. 🤗
