Julia Roberts

New York, Oct. 6 (Reuters): Move over granny. Knitting’s image in the US as a pastime for the blue-rinse set is being recast, as it gains cachet with a younger crowd drawn by celebrity knitters and the emergence of “knit cafes”.

With knitted hats, ponchos and bags appearing on catwalks, fashionistas have started to create their own scarves and accessories, armed with needles and balls of wool.

British comedienne Tracey Ullman is one of the new pack of celebrity knitters — boasting of her skill at a recent event in New York where she was launching a modern-day knitting guide she co-authored called Knit 2 Together.

Ullman said she learned to knit as a child growing up in England, taught by her mother, but it was not until years later that she became an avid knitter as a way to wind down — but became frustrated by the lack of trendy patterns.

“I wanted to knit skirts, trousers, dreadlocks, sweat pants.... and I couldn’t find any patterns,” Ullman said. “I wanted knitting to be sexy.”

With Los Angeles yarn-store owner Mel Clark, Ullman wrote Knit 2 Together to show other knitters how to move booties and baby blankets into the realm of chic evening bags, saucy aprons, and knitted capri pants called witches’ britches.

Other avid celebrity knitting stars include actress Julia Roberts, who shared her pattern for a striped turtleneck with readers of needlework magazine McCall’s, and Sex and the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who likes to knit between takes on the movie set.

But it is not just stars taking up their needles. Since 2002, participation in both knitting and crochet has surged more than 150 percent in the 25-34 age range, rep- resenting about 6.5 million consumers. There are also some 5.7 million knitters under 18 years old.