The Comeback of Arts and Crafts

You may or may not have noticed, but crafts of all kinds are making a comeback. People the length and breadth of the country are turning to them as an activity to be learned, improved upon and enjoyed.

For some time now, you may have noticed articles about knitting in the glossy magazines telling us that anyone who is anyone is now knitting everything from baby mittens to sweaters, that cross stitch is the new ‘in thing’ and that activity breaks where people revive crafts such as dry-stone walling are incredibly popular.

Why is this? Well, there are many benefits to taking up or continuing to undertake some form of craft. Depending on which one you choose to do, the benefits might include the following:

• Enjoyment
• A sense of achievement
• Keeping the brain active
• Maintaining the dexterity of the fingers
• A moderate amount of physical exertion
• Meeting other people
• Having something useful and/or beautiful when you finish
• A nice warm glow, knowing that you’re helping to maintain traditional skills that are in danger of being lost to us

More and more people are turning to crafts in order to gain some of these benefits. The chain of craft shops, Hobbycraft, now has over 30 ‘superstores’, which gives an indication of how popular crafts are becoming.

So what follows is your personal guide to some of the crafts that you can pursue. We haven’t listed all of them by any means – the list would be almost endless, but we have included the most popular and accessible of them for you to try. If you are successful with your chosen one(s) from this list, you can branch out on your own and be even more adventurous!

So let’s have a brief look at these things in just a little more detail. Maybe we can whet your appetite so that you might just give one or two of them a try.