Why Is Everybody Knitting Chickens?

Summary

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.“Emotional Support Chicken” by Annette CorsinoSince 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.Accessories by Annette CorsinoI 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 Knitti...