You’re a Millennial Crocheter? Come Back in 30 Years.
Nobody Likes You If You’re 23, and Especially Not if You’re a Millennial Crocheter.
Remember how I complained last time about how I’m hanging around in the wrong demographic? Yeah, not only do I crochet instead of knit, but I’m a Millennial crocheter, which means according to Google I don’t exist, which means I don’t exist.
I usually don’t notice these things until I start getting hit with advertising that’s laughably irrelevant to me. (Which is actually a nice change of pace from Google’s depressingly accurate advertising).
There I am, browsing for patterns for a baby piece I wanted to make, when I get an offer for one free issue of a crochet pattern magazine. Why not? I don’t know what to do with all this yarn anyway. When it arrives in the mail, the cover features an adorable colored thread doily. Into my lap falls some tear out advertisements for… a tiffany-style stained glass Eeyore hurricane lamp. And a porcelain wind-up musical baby deer that assures me will make “an en-deer-ing gift for your granddaughter!” From somewhere within this phantasmagoria of nick-knack hell, some indignant part of my subconscious not disabled by horror said, “Granddaughter? Why do they think I have a granddaughter??” Below, see the actual lamp:
gaze into your nightmares.
This is the first time I realized that my favorite hobby may not be marketed to my age group. This had somehow not occurred to me at any point prior to this, up to and including all the time I spent in my church’s knitting ministry every week. We ate cookies and made prayer shawls and I was the only member who had any hair pigment left.
There Were Signs.
I really should have noticed sooner. Like how, every time I walk into Michael’s, I walk out crying about how no one but those living off a comfortable retirement pension could possibly afford anything other than acrylic. And how they keep trying to sell me crochet hooks that are ergonomically padded to ease arthritis symptoms, light up in the dark, magnify the working stitches, and attach with a clip to my macrame reading spectacle’s lanyard. And in hindsight, perhaps my college roommate was calling me a loser not because I declined the invitation to go do body shots with the guys from Alpha Chi Ro, but because of the oversized shawl I was wrapped in and the granny square afghan I was working on at the moment I declined it.
o.o
So, I guess I should just crawl under my maroon worsted ripple stitch afghan with my four cats and an oversized mug of chamomile tea while I wait for retirement age so that I can crochet when I’m no longer considered an anachronism…
BUT WAIT A MINUTE.
A survey released in 2011 by the Craft Yarn Council (yes, that’s a thing) indicates that the statistical age breakdown of knitters and crocheters is much younger than my grinning porcelain baby deer from hell would seem to suggest. In fact, a full 18% of yarncrafters were between the ages of 18 and 34. “Wait a minute!“ shouts that small but hopeful part of my brain. “That’s me!”
That’s right. Furthermore, 37% of the survey group was below the age of 45, and only 34% was above 55. The 45-54 year olds garnered 29%, the single largest age group sampled. That means that most crocheters are moms, not grandmas.
Furthermore, 89% of survey takers said that the internet was their first source for knit and crochet patterns, and that this was consistent across all age groups.
Therefore, Conclusion:
A.) I’ve been dealt a raw deal, and the distributors who are dealing selling me my fix supply of yarn should actually be marketing to me, and not making me feel any dorkier or socially irrelevant than I already do.
and,
B.) All the crocheting bitchez be online, and I can therefore expect this blog to go viral any day now. Come on guys, lets get hoppin’ with those shares! I’m not getting any younger over here and I’m still not famous!!
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