Why Is Everybody Knitting Chickens?
A couple years ago, my wife began knitting. And when she takes an interest in something, she goes all in. She’s a perfectionist about learning a new craft, so in a short amount of time, she’s gotten pretty damn good. I can’t even pretend to know anything more than the most basic idea behind knitting, but somehow she makes incredibly complex garments with skill and precision.
She’s also become active in the online knitting community, which is interesting for me to watch because she’s otherwise not really active online. But now she follows r/knitting and shares on Ravelry and watches knitting videos on YouTube.
The other day she told me about something that’s spread like wildfire through the knitting community: chickens. Knitted chickens. They’re roughly the size of a throw pillow and are stuffed with material to be soft and huggable. Everybody’s making them.
Since the knitting pattern for this chicken was posted on Ravelry in 2023, nearly 11,000 people have posted photos of their own knitted chickens on the platform. The official tutorial video has more than 300,000 views on YouTube with comments like: “This pattern should come with a warning that it is HIGHLY ADDICTIVE! I have finished 4 so far and am working on 2 more.”
People give their knitted chickens names like Hennifer Lopez and Lindsey LoHEN, a punny habit shared by owners of actual backyard chickens, who also like to name their birds after celebrities. (Mine would be Henny Youngman.)
And there are knittable accessories, natch.
I was fascinated by all this. I love little artsy niches and this one was completely new to me. I had to know where the knitted chicken came from. The answer turned out to be easy to find, it just never overlapped with my own interests so I never came across it before.
The knitted chicken is known as the Emotional Support Chicken and was designed by Annette Corsino at a fiber arts shop in Los Angeles called The Knitting Tree. She made the chicken as a sort of play on emotional comfort animals, but one that doesn’t require any sort of permit to own or need to feed it.
It was adapted from an earlier chicken design from the 90s called Henrietta (another “hen” name) by Bev Galeskas.
The idea of a comforting stuffed animal for grownups (or anyone really) that you can make yourself was appealing to a lot of people in these hard times. During COVID lockdowns, people developed indoor hobbies like knitting which meant there were a lot of new knitters among the old-timers looking for things to knit. Knitting is a relaxing activity for many, and the Chicken knitting pattern wasn’t too difficult, so it made a good project for beginner-to-intermediate knitters.
In 2024, the LA Times reported (with great photos you should go look at) that people were gathering at The Knitting Tree for Emotional Support Chicken knit-along events. By then the store had already sold 25,000 copies of the knitting pattern and more than 3,000 kits including everything you need except for needles and stuffing.
I admit that it does look kind of comforting to hug one of these chickens. And that comforting quality has prompted a Facebook group to knit Emotional Support Chickens for survivors of Hurricane Helene. The group description says, “There has been a request for chickens for those suffering from this historical tragedy. This is something I know we can do together! Let’s get together and make some chickens yall!!”
A couple weeks ago someone in the group shared this photo of an Emotional Support Chicken being delivered, noting “The need is real. I carry a few emergency chickens all the time now.”
Variations on the pattern include a crochet version, a mini-version, etc. And it’s a perfect feel-good story for TV news. Here are a couple stories I came across:
And the BBC reported on a yarn shop in Suffolk that displayed 67 olympic-themed chickens knitted by people around the world in its front window.
More fun photos await if you click through
This is obviously a trend that lots of people know about, and I have just been out of the loop (that’s a knitting pun). Have any of my readers ever made an emotional support chicken? What did you name it?
And that brings another newsletter to a close! So far, the move to Ghost seems to be going okay, right? No problems on your end? Only one person said they missed last issue so hopefully everyone else is getting it.
As long as you’re here, I have something for the font nerds among us. You know who you are. I directed a short documentary for Nebula about their new font and it’s now on YouTube:
Hope everyone has a great week. See you next time!
David