Crochet craze: Clark County middle school students crochet for calm and connection at club

Pineapple, diamond, brick, bobble, spike, wattle, bamboo, butterfly, popcorn, puff, corkscrew and cactus. That might sound like a top-secret World War II code or a sophisticated word association game, but it’s actually a list of crochet stitches.

The young girls in Pacific Middle School’s knitting club might not know every one of the 150 crochet stitches, but they’ve certainly mastered the basics. With the help of their club instructor, Bailey Navarro, they’ve embraced this “granny craft” and found an antidote to everyday anxieties in a world that gets more tangled every day.

“I like to crochet because it takes my mind off the difficult things in life,” said crochet club president Sophia Goulding, 11. “I don’t have to think about all the things that are troubling me. I just think about all the things that I can make.”

Goulding discovered crochet in — of all places — her English class. Ellie Kingsley, who’s taught English at Pacific Middle School for 27 years and been an educator for 37 years, invited her daughter-in-law Bailey Navarro into her sixth grade classroom last year. Kingsley hoped Navarro could introduce students to a “calm, quiet” activity to settle them down. Navarro taught the kids a few common stitches but she also taught them about the history of crochet, going back to the first books ever published about the craft, written in the mid-1800s by Eléonore Riego de la Branchardiere.

Kingsley said “the kids absolutely loved it” and begged her to allow Navarro to return. Navarro did, four more times, discussing the crochet revival of the ’60s and ’70s, which really got going in 1975 after Woman’s Day magazine published a book featuring granny square patterns.

After Navarro’s repeat appearances, several girls in Kingsley’s class took up crochet in a more determined way. Kingsley allowed her students to crochet during class and some other teachers at Pacific Middle School followed suit.

“We crochet every other class when we can,” said Morgan Brumbaugh, 11. “It just kind of calms me down. It’s fun.”

Kingsley said it keeps students off their phones (which are banned in the classroom, anyway) and gives them a concrete, productive task. When the kids are crocheting, Kingsley said, they stop fidgeting and start focusing.

“I’m hoping this does spread. It’s kind of getting back to the basics with this grandma-like activity,” said Kingsley, who is a grandma herself. “It gets them off what I call ‘doomscrolling’ on their phones and gets them back to doing something with a purpose.”

Hands busy, mind free

When the current school year started, budding crocheters wanted a regular meet-up where they could learn new stitches, exchange patterns and ideas, work on projects and socialize with other crochet enthusiasts. Goulding, Brumbaugh and June Mathena petitioned school administrators to allow an after-school knitting club, with Kingsley as their teacher-supervisor and Navarro as their instructor. After that, the crochet craze spread around the school.

“I was originally attracted to crochet because my friends were crocheting and I wanted to learn how,” said Mathena, 11. “It takes a little bit of stress off of whatever’s going on, to just let go and crochet.”

Washougal resident Navarro, 27, can relate. She said she started crocheting at 6 years old, after she saw her mother crochet a baby blanket for her soon-to-be-born sister. Navarro went on to make lots of blankets and dresses for her dolls, she said. She continued crocheting in school and especially during college because she said it helped her to concentrate during class.

“Crochet is an amazing thing. What happens is when you’re in a lecture, you start to listen more and cognitively focus more on what’s around you,” Navarro said. “Now that your hands are busy, your mind is free.”

After the club starting meeting in November 2025, members produced an astonishing array of items. Goulding, who likes to watch documentaries while she crochets, said she’s made “so much clothing,” including hats, cardigans, sweaters and shirts. She said she likes to see them all hanging in her closet, a pretty crochet tableau.

“I like to make a lot of plushes,” Brumbaugh said, referring to small stuffed animals. “I also make hats. I just make random things sometimes because I’m bored. It’s just fun to crochet and have my hands busy. There’s a lot of different patterns that you can do with different sizes of hooks and yarn.”

Recently an idea clicked into place in Navarro’s mind. She’d just started a job as activities director for Arcadia Senior Living Lookout Ridge in Washougal, and she was trying to come up with new ways to engage the retirement community’s 45 residents. She started giving residents “fun money” (that is, pretend currency) every time they participated in an activity, to be used at the Feeling Lucky Raffle on March 31.

“My girls are making all these beautiful pieces that they don’t know what to do with,” Navarro said. “And I said ‘Why don’t we donate this all to the raffle?’ ”

The girls loved the idea, said Navarro, and so they crocheted furiously to get extra projects done in time for the raffle. It’s a way to contribute to the community, Kingsley said — an important experience for kids that age, allowing them to feel connected to others and that they’re doing something good.

Many residents at Lookout Ridge used to knit and crochet, Navarro said, but conditions like arthritis have made it difficult for them to work with their hands. However, Navarro said they still love to watch other people crochet or do handicrafts. Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh I remember doing that and I remember going fast,” Navarro said.

That’s why Navarro is making sure that the intergenerational connection won’t end with the raffle. Navarro is also planning a tea party at Lookout Ridge on April 19, when the girls can meet the seniors who won their colorful creations. The girls can “come crochet and sit and hang out and talk to the residents,” Navarro said.

“All parents and family are welcome and it will give my seniors a chance to meet all these lovely girls who made all these lovely things,” Navarro said. “We’re going to have tea and cakes and cookies and of course crochet.