Why We’re All Embracing Our Inner Grandma (And Loving Every Minute Of It)

There’s a good chance you’ve noticed it creeping into your feed. Knitting needles clicking away in a cosy corner. Someone’s hands deep in bread dough, flour dusted across the bench. A jigsaw puzzle spread across the dining table, half finished, with a cup of tea going cold beside it. Welcome to the grandma hobbies trend, and if you’ve found yourself wanting to pick up a crochet hook or start a vegetable patch lately, you are far from alone.

What Exactly Is This Trend?

It’s simple, really. We’re all trading screen time for slow time, and doing it in the most old fashioned way possible. Think knitting, crocheting, embroidery, jigsaw puzzles, baking, preserving, gardening, hand written letters, and yes, even the humble crossword. The kind of pastimes our grandmothers filled their afternoons with, long before phones existed to fill the gaps.

Social media has given it a name, grandmacore, but the appeal runs a lot deeper than an aesthetic. After years of hustle culture telling us to optimise every minute, there’s something quietly rebellious about choosing a hobby simply because it feels good, not because it makes us more productive or more employable.

Why We’re All Craving It

I think a lot of us are exhausted by the pace of everything. Our phones ping constantly, our to do lists never end, and even our downtime often gets filled with more scrolling. Grandma hobbies ask for the opposite. They ask us to slow right down, to use our hands instead of our thumbs, and to sit with a task that can’t be rushed. You can’t scroll through a row of knitting any faster than your hands allow.

There’s also a lovely nostalgia wrapped up in it. For a lot of us, these hobbies are tied to memories of our own grandmothers, the smell of something baking, the click of needles while the telly played in the background, a garden that somehow always had something ready to pick. Picking these hobbies up ourselves feels like a small way of holding onto that.

The Hobbies Having a Moment

Knitting and crochet. Genuinely one of the most satisfying things you can do with your hands, and there is no shortage of beginner friendly patterns for blankets, jumpers, and even the granny square tote bags popping up everywhere.

Jigsaw puzzles. A thousand piece puzzle left out on the table has become the new coffee table centrepiece. It’s a lovely thing to potter over in the evenings instead of automatically reaching for the remote.

Painting and colouring in. There’s a reason adult colouring books had their moment and never really left, there’s something wonderfully calming about staying inside the lines with nothing else demanding your attention. Watercolours are having a similar revival too, no formal training required, just a cheap set of paints, some paper, and permission to make something a bit wobbly. It’s less about the finished piece and more about the hour you spent not looking at your phone.

Bread baking and preserving. Sourdough had its moment a few years back and it never really left. Now it’s expanding into jam making, pickling, and the deeply satisfying ritual of a well stocked pantry.

Gardening. Whether it’s a few pots of herbs on the balcony or a full vegetable patch, there’s real joy in growing something from seed and watching it come good. It’s also one of the few hobbies that rewards patience in the most literal sense.

Letter writing and journaling. Putting pen to paper, whether it’s a proper letter to a friend or simply your own thoughts in a journal, has become its own small act of slowing down.

Needlepoint and embroidery. Portable, meditative, and increasingly popular thanks to modern kits that take the fuss out of getting started.

How to Ease Into It

You don’t need to overhaul your life or spend a fortune to get started. Pick whichever hobby appeals most, buy a simple beginner’s kit, and give yourself permission to be bad at it for a while. That’s honestly half the charm. These aren’t hobbies about being good at something quickly, they’re about enjoying the process.

I’d also say, don’t feel you need to share every stitch of it online. Some of the loveliest parts of this trend are the ones we keep just for ourselves, an hour with the garden, a puzzle nobody’s watching us do. Sometimes the best hobbies are the ones that ask nothing of us except our time.

Maybe that’s the real appeal of going full grandma. It’s not about the aesthetic at all. It’s about giving ourselves permission to slow down, use our hands, and enjoy something simply for the sake of it.