This Grandma Hobby Is Off the Hook
So is its high-tech grandchild
Hi WNVM-ers,
I’m so grateful to Fawnia for holding things down here for the last month! Now I’m back, with an off-the-beaten path story. In my career as a consumer/retail reporter, I always welcomed the opportunity to wander out of my usual beauty and wellness beat to explore companies or niches that were new to me. (Here at WNVM, that looks like this, this, and this.) This week, we’re going crafting! Even if you never made a Peanuts latch hook when you were young, I hope you’ll read how the craft has resurged and evolved beyond the lowly handheld hook.
Then, Scary Spice shops, Rick Astley Rickrolls us all, and Keanu gets hurt.
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Hooked On Classics
Tufting is the new latch hooking — but old-school latch hooking is also having a resurgence.
By Cheryl
A few years ago, my college-aged son wanted a rug in the shape of the memoji that looks like a boar getting his mind blown. (Do not ask me why. Gen Z is sometimes just unknowable.) He found an Etsy seller who could make it, so he ordered it.
When it came, I couldn’t believe the quality and detail. It took me two years to realize it actually wasn’t a latch hook that someone patiently knotted on their kitchen table, which is the only kind of handmade rug I really understood at the time. The creator had made it with a handheld mechanical gun, a process called tufting.
Latch hooking and tufting are on the same continuum of fuzzy rug art, separated by a couple of generations and a dark period in the minimalist ‘90s when no one was really making novelty rugs at all. Tufting is the iPhone to latch hook’s brown kitchen wall phone with a six-foot cord. And weirdly, both are popular right now: tufting as a newer craft that emerged during Covid, and latch hooking both as a low-tech throwback comfort activity and a vintage collectible.
Nostalgia plays a part, of course, but people of all ages are longing to get off their phones and touch grass yarn. There is also a lot of existential job angst, particularly among younger people (“I felt, like, super, super dead inside,” one said to me), and a desire for a creative outlet. And over and over, I heard how meditative these crafts are.
“There's something for me about tactile interaction with the creative process that shuts off so many different anxiety parts of my brain, and allows me to just be present and be in a state of flow,” says Charlie Serotoff, 41, who has turned a tufting hobby into an art practice. (Seriously, check out his Instagram.)
Latch Hooks
If you grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, you probably remember the ubiquity of latch hooks. This Reddit image titled: “Guess how many latch hook rugs I had on the walls of my house?” is a great period example of the form.
Latch hooking has a centuries-long history as a legitimate rug style made with different techniques. This homey folk art morphed into a campy craft for the masses to make groovy mushrooms, Smurfs, and Garfield rugs in the ‘70s and ‘80s. As a Muppet fan who graduated from “Sesame Street” to the more grown-up “Muppet Show” in the late ‘70s, I made this Kermit rug:
The learning curve for latch hooking is low. Most commercial kits come with the design printed on the canvas. Once you learn how to hold the hook and loop the pre-cut small pieces of yarn, it’s easy to crank out the rows of knots that make up the design.
Latch hooking fell out of favor in the early ‘90s, becoming an obscure craft. But it’s back.
Vintage Rugs
I spend a lot of time skulking in vintage stores looking for ‘70s home artifacts. I started noticing pre-made vintage latch hooks all over the place, and wondered, “Are these a … thing?”
Yep.
“We have been selling lots of latch hook pieces!” says D. Matt Smith, the co-owner of the Newburgh Vintage Emporium in New York’s Hudson Valley. “The latch hook has definitely made a comeback, and the vintage kits to make latch hook pieces sell well [too].”
You can find completed vintage latch hooks and kits all over Etsy and eBay, many for under $50. My 1979 Kermit kit is there for $40.
I succumbed to a once-popular design of cattail reeds against an orange sunset. Then I decided I needed to make my own rug, so I bought an unopened kit from 1980 featuring mushrooms in about 27 different shades of rust.
I’m not going to try to convince you that any of this is in style, but I unironically love the designs I bought. My formative years were steeped in muddy brown and avocado green. But today’s crafters want something brighter.
New-Gen Latch Hookers
Much has been written about younger generations’ desire to get the hell off their phones. Ironically, TikTok has driven a crafting craze, especially for “grandma hobbies” like knitting and crocheting. And the amount of job stress young people feel often drives them to look for ways to blow off steam.
Nakisah Williams, a 29-year-old Australian, studied accounting. After years at corporate fashion jobs, she felt creatively unfulfilled. When Covid lockdowns hit, she rediscovered her love of fiber crafts and started cross-stitching. Her friends wanted to do projects too, but felt like the barrier to entry was too high.
“I realized that there was such an opportunity for craft kits that actually looked really beautiful when you finished them, and more importantly, were really, really easy,” Williams says. “So many of us, especially in our 20s, are looking for new ways to connect with the real world, to use our hands to distract ourselves.”
As I wrote this story, l simultaneously worked on my rug. I love the repetitive motion — it’s so soothing. I did it while on a camera-off Zoom and found myself actually concentrating on the meeting better since I wasn’t sneaking looks at my phone. Williams told me her customers say it’s easier to pay attention to a show or movie when they latch hook, because otherwise they’re “double screening.”
Williams launched Craft Club in 2021, starting with cross-stitch, and then adding other kits, including latch hooks in the form of pillow cases, rugs, and even tote bags. She had no personal history with the craft, though she had seen pieces in local thrift stores and thought they were complicated to make.
“I have talked to so many customers [who] tell me that it was a craft their mom or grandma taught them back in the ‘70s or ‘80s, and seeing it again unlocked all these memories,” says Williams. “I'm honestly jealous of them. I wish I'd had that experience growing up, because it's just such a magical craft.”
Long-time craft retailers like Herrschners and Shillcraft sell latch hook kits that are probably what you’d expect if you haven’t seen one since 1986. Etsy offers quirkier designs, like Klimt in rug form. (This Bauhaus (the band) rug is amazing. The seller should offer New Wave rug kits.)
But Williams felt the current market was “old-fashioned.” She designs all of Craft Club’s fun, colorful patterns, like tulips, strawberries, butterflies, and chaotic gingham, which appeal to color-loving Zoomers. The latch hook kits are some of her best sellers and frequently sell out.
Still, latch hook’s imperfect and fuzzy, almost pixelated, final image — someone in the 4000-person subreddit said it is the “watercolor of yarn arts” — can’t compete on speed and detail with its new-ish flashy relative, tufting.
Tufting Guns
Tufting took off during the pandemic, because of, again, TikTok. Curbed and the LA Times both covered the tufting craze that emerged in the early days of Covid. People bought the equipment, with some starting side hustles to sell pieces on Etsy, like the person who did my kid’s boar rug. The tufting subreddit has 43,000 members, ten times that of latch hooking.
Tufting is more complicated and expensive than latch hooking. Canvas is stretched across a wood frame, then the pattern is projected onto it and traced with a marker. Cones of yarn feed into a mechanical handheld tufting gun, which snips the yarn as it goes to make a fluffy pile. The yarn ends up much more densely placed than in a latch hook rug, and it’s easier to make curved shapes with the gun than in a latch hook design. Watch:
Tufting Studios
Now, there are public tufting studios all across the country; you can find one in pretty much every city. NYC has multiples. I haven’t seen many trend stories yet that have traced the growth of these businesses nationally, but I think it’s on the upswing. (You heard it here first, New York Times.)
Andrew Kim, 31, modeled Scattered Kind, the first and largest tufting studio in NYC, after ceramic studios, which first took off in the ‘70s. The studio teaches you the technique, and will do the glueing and trimming to finish off the rug. Customers do the fun part, which is putting the yarn to the canvas to create the design. (No paint-and-sip style wine drinking here, though, because you’re around sharp instruments!) I tried it at the studio, and can confirm it’s very satisfying, like painting with yarn.
Kim has worked as a cybersecurity consultant and at a digital marketing firm, but really wanted to make things, like he did when he was younger.
“The day after I started learning [tufting], I actually had this really big breakdown at work. I snapped finally — I just couldn't take it anymore,” Kim says. “I was crying to my manager, just like, ‘Oh man, this job is so stupid.’”
Kim quit and started selling tufted pieces online, but realized that would be hard to scale since he was only one person; plus he was down to $500 in his bank account. So he started offering workshops, which always sold out. That led to a series of ever-larger spaces, resulting in the airy loft in Long Island City that houses Scattered Kind now.
You can sign up for a one day workshop, for about $130, choosing a rug ahead of time from a flash sheet-style list of designs, or work on a custom image with the shop. Kim says it’s a popular date night activity, and he also hosts corporate clients like Meta and Google who hold events at the studio. (Even “groups of 50-year-old moms from Long Island” come through.)
What is consistent in both the ancient art of latch hooking and the newfangled tufting is that people still want to hang pop culture characters on their walls. Kim says the most popular designs are surprised Pikachu, Kirby, Mario mushrooms, and “so, so many Murakami flowers.”
The Art of Tufting
Which brings us back to Charlie Serotoff, who told us up top how relaxing tufting is. He started going to Scattered Kind about 18 months ago, and now rents space there to work on his own projects. He has the now-familiar story, with a long career in software product management, burnout, and artistic talent (he’s dabbled in costume fabrication) that needed an outlet.
“I think the medium is so interesting and so unique because these rugs and this type of art is like ASMR for your eyes,” Serotoff says.
Serotoff went from tufting Simpsons rugs to creating large, elaborate faces meant to be a “visualization of my mental health journey.” They really beg to be touched, and are strategically carved with a shaver to add three-dimensional aspects. The pieces, with names like “Spicy Thinking” and “Hypervigilance,” are truly incredible to see in real life.
Serotoff has shown his art, Rugs of Reflection, at galleries, selling pieces for $2500 each. He was just chosen to exhibit some pieces at a Pride art installation at New York City’s Gracie Mansion from June 6 through August 8. (If you’re interested in other artistic interpretations of tufting, check out the work of Shishi San, Trish Andersen, and Tom Atton Moore.)
No one is going to exhibit my little latch hook mushroom rug. But it’s been a source of curiosity for my son, who is back in my home, boar rug in tow. He noticed my half-finished project sitting on the table and asked, “Mom, did you tuft this?”
We are two Gen X journalists who celebrate people of our generation doing cool things, as well as analyze all the '80s and '90s nostalgia in current pop culture, fashion, and beauty. Read more stories like this one here!
YOU OUGHTA KNOW
Since the “Brats” debacle, I am not the biggest Andrew McCarthy fan. But I have to admit that even I succumbed to the very charming IG story he posted with his daughter heading to prom. “She did not wear pink.” -CW [People]
“Even though my kids say I'm vintage now, my fashion's come back in style,” says Mel B. a.k.a. Scary Spice, to Fashionista — where Cheryl and I first met! While walking down fashion memory lane, she chats about Neneh Cherry’s strong influence on her, her forever love of leopard print, and that she’s Vivienne Westwood’s favorite Spice Girl. -FSH [Fashionista]
I am mad that in the first scene of the season opener of “And Just Like That,” the show sullied one of the top love songs of all time, Yaz’s “Only You,” by using it to imply that Aidan is worthy of it. Yes, like everyone else, I will continue to hate-watch this show until the bitter end. But honestly, if you crave bizarre large hats and Cynthia Nixon’s character having a dalliance with a member of the clergy, you’ll be much better served by fellow HBO show “The Gilded Age.” -CW. Co-sign on anything Aidan — I can't unsee it *shudder* — and teaser for next week's newsletter! -FSH [Cheryl’s brain]
Kea-news! If you’re over 50, you will empathize with the highly relatable way Reeves broke his kneecap while filming Good Fortune with Aziz Ansari and Seth Rogen: He tripped on a rug. He shot most of the movie with the injury, only agreeing to take a break before shooting a salsa dancing scene. A hero. -CW [Entertainment Weekly]
I never thought I would mention the Smurfs twice in one newsletter, yet here we are. Rihanna, who plays Smurfette in the new film, sings a cover of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” Related, Carlisle is working on a new album which comes out in August. Dream WNVM interview! -CW [Rolling Stone]
Rick Astley’s 1987 banger “Never Gonna Give You Up” just passed one billion Spotify streams. You’ve been Rickrolled! -CW [The Hollywood Reporter]
I asked my mom to buy me a panda rug latch hook kit and typical of child me, I lost interest after doing a couple legs maybe. (Probably wanted to watch TV.) She finished it and we had it in our house until they moved. I wonder if it’s sitting in some thrift store today. She did a good job!
This just brought me WAY back- I remember latch hooking as a kid while my mom crocheted, although for the life of me I cannot remember what the designs were. I just remember it felt very satisfying to make those knots! As an aside, that boar is how I feel ever time I turn on the news…🤯