Feeling stressed out and needing a place to cool off during the school day? West High’s Knitting Club is the perfect place to refocus while spending time catching up with your friends and enjoying snacks.
Hoping to create a relaxing environment for students to pursue a new hobby, Isun Shim ’27 co-founded Knitting Club this year alongside Lily Polgreen ’27 and Ella Haim ’27. Every Friday during AFT, students meet in West’s English teacher Sonja Bruxvoort’s room to knit various items including blankets, scarfs and dolls.
Knitting is more than just a hobby. It has several health benefits, including lowering heart rate and blood pressure and reducing stress hormones. Consequently, Shim sees knitting as a therapeutic activity.
“Knitting helped me a lot with mental stuff. It’s very calming,” Shim said. “Life is hard, and [knitting is a more] calming activity [for me] rather than spending time watching Instagram Reels.”
Shim believes knitting can contribute to versatile skills that anyone can pick up regardless of age or experience.
“Having a hobby like knitting is a lifelong hobby, and it’s all about your muscle memory, so it’s really good for your brain,” Shim said.
Because materials are provided to all club members, Knitting Club has become popular among many students as Shim makes sure the club is inclusive for everyone.
“I buy [materials] for students, and they start with that. Sometimes when a club makes you buy your own stuff, you just don’t want to spend money. I think providing the materials makes it so everybody can join,” Shim said.
Once club members gain more experience knitting, Shim’s goal is to knit 70 dolls to donate to All Nations Baptist Church as Christmas presents.
“We have to prepare a month before so we didn’t really have enough time to donate dolls [this year], but [right now], we’re learning how to make dolls and preparing the donations for next year,” Shim said.
Shim also hopes to donate to more charities in the future through increasing the club size by counting every AFT meeting towards Silver Cord hours, which motivates more students to join.
“I’m working on having AFT count for silver cord hours so students can stack their hours and calculate them,” Shim said. “We have enough students so far starting out, so [by next year] I’m thinking [we can] donate clothes and blankets to Goodwill.”
Besides donations, Shim ultimately hopes that Knitting Club can be a space for students to wind down from the day.
“For now, since it’s just the beginning; a lot of people don’t really know how to knit, but I feel like after our system is good and we know how to make dolls, we can just [chill] and watch movies while we knit,” Shim said.
