“One chain stitch, then a treble...” Julie Godin is patiently helping a customer to crochet a scarf. She is the owner of Atelier Pénélope, a haberdashery near Libération district in Nice that she reopened in March 2019 with a focus on workshops.
The wool and thread balls arranged on shelves and in cabinets are as bright as Ms Godin’s piercing blue eyes. Their colours and the sheer quantity animate the entire shop – entering feels a little like stepping into a Tim Burton set.
A rainbow of woolThéophile Larcher
Ms Godin laughs. “I always feel like I’m in the Dumbo movie – the part where he drinks champagne and sees pink elephants everywhere. It’s certainly a bit magical to work here.
“There’s a sharp contrast when I close the door and head out onto the street,” she adds.
Ms Godin relocated to the south of France for family reasons, having previously worked in Paris as a jewellery maker for, among others, luxury brand Bulgari.
Create a cute soft toyThéophile Larcher
Her move from jewellery to crochet (self-taught) was for the latter’s wider array of creative possibilities, she says.
It is certainly popular. People were knocking on the door of the premises while it was still being renovated, she explains, and have supported her from the first day of opening.
Ms Godin’s is one of only three haberdasheries in Nice. Yarn crafts were declining in popularity for many years before social media, especially Instagram, brought a new generation of fans.
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The summer following the shop’s opening, Ms Godin opened her first crochet craft workshops to pass on her skills, help befuddled newbies and maintain intergenerational social ties, she says.
Prices start from €18 for two hours in a group session.
Craft camaraderie
The Drôles de dame group meet on Fridays – five women who sit around the shop’s oval wooden table to chat and craft together.
With Dominique concentrating on her scarf, Anna and Vivianne are working on a handbag and Michèle on a Peruvian woolly hat.
The matriarch of the group is Huguette, a 91-year-old with a sharp mind who lived 50-plus years in Champagne before relocating to Nice four years ago after her husband died.
Tuition and talkThéophile Larcher
They already know the ropes – which is lucky, as on the day of our visit, Ms Godin’s hand is strapped in a splint due to tendonitis.
“It’s all maths really. You count over and over and over,” explains Huguette.
What they need is guidance and inspiration. On the table, for example, lies one of Ms Godin’s creations, a mid-sized rainbow-coloured bag that she crocheted in just 90 minutes.
The camaraderie is also a big draw. The lesson at Atelier Pénélope is just one of many examples of a craft reinventing itself by offering social interaction.
Think of it as the crochet equivalent of the blabla caisse (chatty till) Carrefour launched post-Covid.
For the Friday group, there is also a hint of nostalgia.
“At the heart of most of our childhoods was a grandmother who crocheted doilies,” says Huguette. “My mother found them horrendous. I think this is why the craft almost disappeared.
“But my grandmother always used to tell me I’d regret not knowing how to crochet. When I joined the atelier, it certainly felt like she was having the last laugh.”
Ms Godin thinks the scarcity of World War Two years also played a role in the decline of crochet as a craft, as it uses more wool than knitting.
These days it seems to appeal across generations. Ms Godin’s crafting workshops are booked by clients as young as 10 up to those of Huguette’s maturity.
The latter was particularly proud to show a picture on her phone of one of her grandchildren’s own amigurumi, the Japanese term for crocheted stuffed toys, often resembling an animal.
Ms Godin and her Drôles de dame group reveal their next project will be a pencil case.
Origins of crochet
The word ‘crochet’ has French origins. It is a diminutive of croche, in turn from the Germanic croc, which both mean 'hook'.
It was used in 17th-Century French lace-making, where the term crochetage designated a stitch used to join separate pieces of lace.
Théophile Larcher
Research suggests crochet probably developed most directly from Chinese needlework. This very ancient form of embroidery was known in Turkey, India, Persia and North Africa, and reached Europe in the 1700s. It was referred to as tambouring, from the French tambour or drum, a nod to its rhythmic and repetitive motions, and quickly became popular among the French upper classes.
At the end of the 18th Century, tambour evolved into what the French called 'crochet in the air'. As the name suggests, the background fabric was discarded and the stitch worked on its own.
