Today is the last day of the Los Angeles County Fair, one of my favorite times of the year. There is so much I love about this fair in Pomona, including (but not limited to) the performances, the Farm, the Garden Pavilion, the wine and olive oil tasting, the Great Outdoors section, the Fairplex Garden Railroad, RailGiants Train Museum and the Home Arts building (especially the tablescaping competition).
But for this post I’m focusing on the fair and its crochet history.
This year, I made 17 granny squares for the fair’s large-scale crochet project in the Home Arts building. For the first time, the LA County Fair offered free workshops to show folks how to granny-square so that we could make huge crochet tapestries that would hang at the fair. Volunteers submitted over 1,200 granny squares to this project.
Learning to crochet has been a life goal, as it seemed like every woman in my family knew their way around a crochet hook and a skein of yarn. I’ve inherited so many family-made crochet projects, including (but not limited to) afghans, potholders, scarves, jewelry, and toilet paper dolls. But no one could teach me because my being left-handed was “a thing.” So when the LA County Fair offered free workshops, free yarn, and free crochet hooks, I thought, “Say less!”
Located in the historic Millard Sheets Arts Center, these workshops led by Pomona-based Khaos Crafts were amazing! I met so many fascinating people and really enjoyed hearing how crochet had woven (pun intended!) through their lives. As to be expected, these workshops not only drew needle novices like myself, but experts who just wanted to granny-square with other yarn-minded folks.
One inspiring young man explained how his grandmother taught him to crochet and articulated how his designs paid homage to her Purépecha heritage. This young man blew me away with the ways his family’s Michoacán history influenced his beautiful crochet projects and explained that his creative handmade work “was the physical manifestation of my grandmother.” And I thought I was honoring my family’s crocheting history by bringing my grandma’s old hook. As we said goodbye that day, he gifted me a crocheted owl he designed based on Purépecha patterns and motifs. Our conversation was one of my favorite moments of 2025.
These workshops had me curious about the crochet history of the LA County Fair, and the larger crochet history of Los Angeles. I’ve long been fascinated how women’s histories are told through their work with textiles, such as quilting, crocheting, knitting, sewing, beading, and embroidery. Once you start asking about the yarn someone is using…or the fabric, or the threads, or the needles, or the designs … it’s amazing how women’s histories start to unfold.
“Handmade objects have a story. They have been touched, manipulated, hammered, thrown, carved by another human hand. They connect us to our past and to our familial and cultural histories,” Rosy Greenlees and Mark Jones, from the foreword in Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft.
Below are just some initial bits of crochet history I found related to the LA County Fair but I hope to dig deeper to find more yarns to tell. 🙂
In 1965, the LA County Fair hosted a contest to see who could crochet the fastest (images are from Cal Poly Pomona Library’s Fairplex collection).
In 1960, the LA County Fair held the “Lady Nimble Fingers Contest” which was featured in this news report found in Cal Poly Pomona Library’s Fairplex collection (and shared online via the California Revealed initiative).
Clips of old Los Angeles newspapers (circa 1860s & 1870s) with listings of crochet projects among public exhibits and displays:
You know, reading about LA’s agricultural and industrial fairs that took place over 150 years ago felt like I was reading about exhibits at the LA County Fair. The items displayed in the 1860s and 1870s, for the most part, were the same type of items displayed in 2025. The Pomona fair may be 103 years old, but it reflects Angelenos’ longer history of showing off our homegrown and handmade talents.*
*As Los Angeles historians have previously documented, the displays of livestock and produce at these early agricultural and industrial fairs were part of the booster effort to show off the natural bounty available in a 19th century Los Angeles. And now I’m wondering if the 1860s-70s displays of “women’s work” — like silk embroidery and crocheted shawls — were part of an effort to show a “cultured” side to Los Angeles, full of refinement and elegance…?
Victoria Bernal 
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