Why yarn queen Nicola Robb is telling Hong Kong to get knitted

Anyone who loves knitting will feel like the proverbial kid in the candy store when they visit Yarn in the Works in Sheung Wan. And that’s the feeling Nicola Robb was aiming for when she set up her shop late last year.

Trained as a cultural historian with a background in fine art, Robb turned to needles and yarn when she moved from Hong Kong to New York “in the dead of winter” in 2009. Pregnant with her fourth child, Scottish-born Robb says knitting helped her cope with the very long dark nights.

“Knitting had a big cultural following there at the time – you could go to Soho or Downtown Yarns and meet other knitters. It had a community focus.

“I also studied 18th-century women’s history and was very interested in how they created things – knitted a jumper, shared stories with their daughters and passed down skills like knitting.”

Robb wants to lure people away from their smartphones. “I want people on the ferry and the buses to knit instead of wasting time on their phones. I want them to take time to create something through knitting. Smart people are knitters, after all.”