Knitting and Craft Shop Sector in London Holds On Through Pandemic, Fast Fashion, and Digital Commerce by Offering What No Website Can: Letting You Feel the Mohair Before You Commit
Welcome to Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat — the satirical retail dispatch from the independent craft sector that was supposed to be extinct and is instead thriving, which is the best kind of surprise.
London’s independent yarn shops have survived the digital commerce revolution through the specific and unreplicable advantage of tactile retail: you cannot feel yarn on the internet. You can see it. You can read its fibre content, its weight category, its recommended needle size. You can study photographs in eleven different lighting conditions. You cannot feel whether it is scratchy or soft, how it splits on the needle, how it blooms when washed. These are the properties that determine whether a yarn works for its intended project, and they are only available by touching the yarn, which requires being in a shop, which requires the shop to exist, which requires people to use it, which they do, which is why London’s independent yarn shops have not followed the music shops, the video rental shops, the travel agents, and the various other retail categories that the internet rendered redundant into the archive of things that used to be on high streets.
London’s Significant Yarn Shops: Where the Serious Knitters Go and What They Find There
Loop in Islington is London’s most celebrated independent yarn shop: a curated selection of independent British and international yarn producers, knowledgeable staff who knit and can advise on project-specific choices, a community feel that its loyal customer base describes as the primary reason they return regardless of whether they need yarn. Prick Your Finger in Bethnal Green specialises in natural and British-produced fibres with a strong ethical sourcing position. I Knit London in Waterloo provides a central London location with a broad mainstream selection and a community events programme. “The shops that are doing well,” confirmed retail analyst Helena Cartwright, who has been researching craft retail for ten years, “are the ones that offer expertise, community, and tactile experience. They’re not competing with Amazon on price. They’re competing on the things Amazon cannot provide.” Loop London’s site covers their current stock and events programme.
The Knitting Resurgence: Why More People Are Knitting and Why London’s Yarn Shops Are the Infrastructure Behind It
Knitting participation in the UK increased significantly through the 2020-2021 lockdown period and has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that the increase included both people who knitted during lockdown and gave it up afterward and people who discovered knitting during lockdown and continued. The Ravelry platform (the global knitting and crochet pattern database and community) has over nine million registered users, suggesting that the craft’s participant community is substantially larger than its public visibility implies. London’s yarn shops are the physical infrastructure that this community uses when it graduates from online pattern shopping to project-specific yarn sourcing, which is the progression that most serious knitters make and which produces the customer who knows exactly what DK weight merino they need for the specific pattern they are making and wants to see it in three colourways before deciding. For satirical London craft retail journalism, visit The London Prat.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
I am a Lagos-born poet and satirical journalist navigating West London’s contradictions. I survived lions at six, taught English by Irish nuns, now wielding words as weapons against absurdity. Illegal in London but undeniable. I write often for https://bohiney.com/author/junglepussy/.
As a young child, I was mostly influenced by the television show Moesha, starring singer and actress Brandy. Growing up, I would see Brandy on Moesha and see her keeping in her cornrows and her braids, but still flourish in her art and music, looking fly. I loved Moesha as a child, but now I take away something more special from it. Just because you’re a black girl, it doesn’t mean you need to only care about hair and makeup. Brandy cared about books, culture and where she was going — you can do both.
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