I want to be clear about something upfront: I did not take up crochet for my mental health.
I took it up because I met a woman at a hen party who showed me photos of things she’d made — cute plushies, professional-looking garments — and she’d only been doing it for a few months. I went home that same evening, ordered a starter kit from Amazon for about £16, and got to work. That was it. No grand plan, no wellness goals. Just my silly curiosity and a slight inability to resist a new thing.
But here’s what happened anyway.
The Evening Problem
I’m a full-time blogger. My work — the writing, the photography, the thinking, the planning — happens on a screen. Most of it happens in my head. And by the time the evening rolls around, my brain is still going, still processing, still quietly working through the day’s list even as I’m technically supposed to be relaxing.
Scrolling doesn’t fix this. Watching TV sort of helps but not really. My brain needs something to do with itself, just not something demanding.
Crochet, it turns out, is exactly the right amount of something.
It occupies just enough of your attention that the other noise quietens down. You’re counting stitches, following a pattern, keeping tension — there’s no mental bandwidth left over for whatever you were overthinking five minutes ago. But it’s not so cognitively demanding that it’s stressful (well, once you get over the learning curve!). It sits in this sweet spot where your hands are busy, your brain is gently occupied, and everything else just… fades out.
I crochet most evenings on the sofa now. It’s become one of my favourite parts of the day.
The Thing About Making Progress
One of the things I didn’t expect was how much the sense of progress would matter.
When your work is primarily digital, it can be hard to feel like you’ve made anything. You write posts, you edit photos, you plan content — and at the end of the day, what do you actually have? More files. More tabs. A to-do list that’s slightly shorter than it was.
Crochet gives you something real that you can hold. Something that grows, row by row, in a way you can actually see.
I made a shawl very early on — within my first few weeks of learning. It’s still my favourite wearable thing I own. I made it myself, with my hands, from scratch! I had never done anything like that before in my life, and the feeling when I finished it was unlike anything I get from ticking off a work task.
It’s not about the object, exactly. It’s about what the object represents: evidence that you did something. That you learned something and you’re getting better, bit by bit.
What the Research Actually Says
There’s a body of research on this, and it backs up what I experienced entirely by accident.
The repetitive, rhythmic motion of crochet has been compared by researchers to the effect of meditation. The act of counting stitches and following a pattern engages just enough of the brain’s prefrontal cortex to quieten the default mode network — that’s the part of your brain responsible for rumination, self-criticism, and replaying awkward conversations from 2014 at 2am. Crochet essentially gives your anxious brain something better to do.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow — the state of being completely absorbed in a task — identifies creative hobbies with the right level of challenge as one of the most reliable routes to it. Flow is where self-consciousness disappears and you’re just fully present in what you’re doing. Anyone who’s ever looked up from their crochet and realised an hour has gone by without noticing will know exactly what this feels like.
There’s also the neurological side. Learning a new physical skill — particularly one that requires both hands doing different things simultaneously, like crochet — builds new neural pathways. You’re literally changing your brain structure. Studies have found that crafting activities are associated with reduced cognitive decline as we age, and people who regularly engage in creative making report higher levels of daily wellbeing.
Beginners’ Brains Are Special, Actually
One thing I found interesting when I started was how present I felt during those early weeks. Every session was genuinely absorbing, because everything was new. I was figuring out how to hold the hook, how to achieve the right tension, what I was even supposed to be looking at.
It was frustrating, yes. But it was also completely engrossing in a way that’s quite hard to achieve once you’re competent at something.
Beginner’s mind — the state of approaching something with fresh eyes, no assumptions, full attention — is actually a sought-after mental state in mindfulness practice. You stumble into it automatically when you’re learning something new. Which is one of the arguments for always having at least one thing in your life that you’re a beginner at.
I wrote about how to get started with crochet if you want the practical side of all this. But I’d say the most important thing about those early sessions wasn’t the skill I was building — it was the quality of attention I was bringing to something for the first time in a while.
The Things I’ve Made
Three weeks into learning, I had a shawl. I also had Halloween granny squares, hats, and a headband. I could not believe how quickly it moved once something clicked.
Since then I’ve made hats for my son to wear to school. I make seasonal bag charms for his school bag that I switch out throughout the year — and he absolutely loves them.
Last Christmas I made snowflake tree ornaments and gifted them to people. Everyone seemed to like them, which matters to me — not because I need the validation, but because there’s something meaningful about handing someone something you made. It lands differently than something you bought.
I’m currently making myself a crochet jumper. Which still feels faintly ambitious, but I’m getting there.
You Don’t Have to Be Crafty
I want to say this clearly, because I think it puts people off: you don’t have to be “a crafty person” to get something out of crochet.
I’m creative, yes, but not in a traditional crafty way. I’m a writer and a photographer. Making things with my hands wasn’t really my identity before this. I had no idea whether I’d be any good at it, or whether I’d stick with it past the first fortnight.
The skill builds faster than you’d think. The first few days are hard — figuring out tension, keeping count, not losing stitches — but once something clicks, it really does click. I went from a beginner square to a wearable shawl in three weeks.
And even if you never make anything particularly impressive, that’s beside the point. The point is the making. The quiet. The evenings when your brain finally gets to rest because your hands are busy.
That’s what I didn’t know I needed. That’s what crochet gave me without me asking for it.
If you’re thinking about starting, I’d genuinely encourage you to just get a kit and try. I wrote a full beginner’s guide — hook sizes, which yarn to use, how to do your first stitches — over here. And if you want to know why I think this kind of creative surge happens in the first place, this post is probably the one to read.