The Antweavers at UCI meet every Thursday in Humanities Hall 254 from 5-7 p.m. to enjoy crafting in a social environment. The Antweavers is a club for those with a common interest in thread-based crafting, primarily engaging in crafts like crochet, knitting and embroidery.
Sydney OBrien, a fourth-year psychology student and the president of The Antweavers, aims “to include as many people as possible.” The club existed at UCI before the COVID-19 pandemic but remained inactive till the 2023 winter quarter, when they were re-registered. OBrien took over for the 2023 spring quarter as the club’s president. Throughout the 2023 fall quarter, OBrien recruited members and a full student board to prepare for re-registration.
Beyond the weekly general meetings, the club has monthly field trips to JOANN, a craft supply chain store. The club also has one or two socials a quarter, usually themed and planned around holidays such as Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, according to OBrien.
They also host weekly picnics to create a casual place for members to drop by and spend time if they have downtime on campus or cannot attend the general meetings. For the spring quarter, the picnics are on Wednesdays from 3-5 p.m. in Aldrich Park. The club also booths on Ring Road at least once a quarter to advertise the club and sell crafts made by members. Members have the option to sell their crafts at the booth for profit or as a means of fundraising for the club.
In addition to having the option to sell their creations, members also have their work featured on the club’s Instagram account, @the.antweavers.
At the club’s May 23 general meeting, Shayna Sparks, a second-year biomedical engineering student interning for the Antweavers student board highlighted the quarter’s upcoming events. Sparks is currently interning to transition into the role of Crochet Master, a position dedicated to teaching new members how to crochet.
The remainder of the meeting was for crafting. The room naturally divided into three smaller groups of club members that maintained various levels of socialization. Music from a YouTube playlist served as background noise as conversations carried on in the smaller groups and between groups.
“Everyone talks to everyone,” said fourth-year language science student and secretary Lya Puente in reference to the club dynamics.
All skill levels are welcome and encouraged in the Antweavers’ community. Manny Santana, a third-year criminology, law and society major joined in the fall 2023 quarter. He spent his first quarter and much of his second quarter in the club crocheting a long chain of yarn and undoing it at the end of every meeting. At the end of the winter quarter, he began doing a single crochet stitch.
Santana is not concerned with learning more advanced crochet and comes for the social environment. In conversational banter between Santana, OBrien and Puente, OBrien laughed and called Santana “the core of our social community here.”
Santana enjoys making new members feel welcome and making sure he talks to everyone at club events.
As five club members graduate, OBrien has coordinated a project in which members make granny squares — “squares of crocheted fabric made in rounds” — to create crochet graduation stoles for the soon-to-be graduates.
As the end of the school year approaches, Sparks looks ahead to the next academic year with the “hope that we can continue the inclusive environment.”
Alyse Billiard is a Campus News Intern for the spring 2024 quarter. She can be reached at abilliar@uci.edu.
Edited by Karen Wang and Jaheem Conley