Which Cities are the Best for Crafters?

Have you ever wondered which cities are the best for crafters? I hadn’t, either, but Liberty London recently crunched some data to find out.

In all they looked at 76 different data points for the 100 largest cities in America, such as the number of knitting and fabric shops, search engine data and posts on Instagram and TikTok. Based on this data they determined the cities where crafters are likely to have the most resources available to them, as well as other people to craft with.

Overall, San Francisco came out on top as the best city for crafters in the United States, and it topped the list as having the most knitting shops as well.

The full top 10 for overall crafting is

San Francisco
New York City
Chicago
Los Angeles
Portland, Oregon
Santa Ana, California
Minneapolis
Newark, New Jersey
Jersey City, New Jersey
San Diego, California

They also declared California the craftiest state, followed by New York, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas. (Though the first Texas city to make the list, Dallas, falls at number 24.)

Looking at Google search popularity, the most search for craft was pottery, at nearly 40 percent of all searches (unknown if that’s all people who want to learn how to make pottery or also includes people wanting to buy pottery, or even searches for the store Pottery Barn). Crochet comes in second at 25 percent, with knitting in third at a little more than 16 percent of crafty searches.

The city where knitting is most popular? According to the survey, it’s Portland, Oregon. (Having been there I tend to agree.) The survey says crochet is most popular in Minneapolis, and sewing in Atlanta.

Residents of Phoenix are most likely to post about crafts on social media, as determined by searching crafty hashtags on Instagram and TikTok. Phoenix tops the list for crafters on TikTok, while Pittsburgh crafters dominate Instagram.

If you don’t live in one of these cities and want to plan a crafty trip, head to San Francisco. It has the most craft stores and the most thrift and charity shops of any city in America.

Check out all the data including a list of the top 100 cities ranked by craftiness at the Liberty London website.

[Photo: Liberty London]

Next Pattern:

Stitch dictionaries are a fun way to learn new-to-you knitting stitch patterns or to take a deep dive into a particular technique. Debbie Tomkies offers 100 cable stitch designs and thoughts on how to incorporate them into projects in her Cable Knitting Stitch Dictionary.

Each stitch pattern is shown in a large swatch photo and with written and charted instructions. Any special stitches are included on the page. The stitches are rated on a difficulty scale of 1 to 3, and the pattern notes also indicate how many extra stitches you should add to a project if you’re going to work this cable (since cables pull the fabric closer together you need to compensate for that) as well as how many stitches and rows are in the repeat if you want to design a project yourself.

The cables are arranged into sections: classic cables, combinations, all-over panels, creative cables, motifs and panels and cabled edges and borders.

It’s fun to flip through the designs to think about projects you can add a single cable or two to or make with an allover cabled design. Or you could make swatches of different cables and sew them together into a pillow cover or a throw.

At the back of the book there’s a section on general cable knitting techniques, reading charts, working swatches and avoiding errors (though it mentions working the wrong number of rows between cable turns, it doesn’t share how to count rows between cables to avoid this mistake).

It also talks about how to design your own cables, combine cables in a project, choose the right yarn and needles and determine how many more stitches you need to cast on when working cables instead of stockinette stitch. There’s also a glossary of symbols and abbreviations you may find in cable knitting and other patterns.

The book provides a good overview of things you can do with cables, as well as some fun things you might not have tried like infinity cables and horizontal cables. It’s a great book for a designer who likes to work with cables or a knitter who wants to play with different stitches in their projects.

About the book: 176 pages, paperback, 100 stitch patterns. Published 2024 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $26.99.

Next Pattern:

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