Knitting is weird, TBH. It seems like the sort of thing you would only enjoy if you managed to enter some 'flow'/'trance'/'hyperfocus' state while doing it, and that seems like something males would experience, far more than females. It's also a highly solitary pursuit that doesn't engage the 'social' brain at all. So what's up with it, how can the average female like it so much?

I just toured Alcatraz recently, and during the audio tour I learned that one of the male inmates there taught other male inmates how to knit, and knitting became a very popular pastime among the all-male prison population of Alcatraz.

There are likely lots of historical, social, and cultural reasons why knitting happens to be more popular among women than men -- reasons that might go back to our hunter-gatherer days, when the stronger, more physically capable men were the ones going out to hunt while women stayed home and took care of, among other things, the creation of clothing.

I'm a self-taught knitter and I also code (though I'm a dude so I can't speak for the female experience).

I wouldn't describe knitting as a flow state in the same way. I frequently listen to podcasts, watch movies, listen to music, etc, when I knit. Knitting is... I dunno... rhythmic?

Now granted that depends. If I'm working cables or some sort of motif or whatever, it can require a bit of focus. But it's definitely not the same as coding. And if the fabric is simple stockinette or something, I don't even need to look at my hands.

It's also not at all solitary unless you want it to be. Knitting circles are a very common thing and I personally love hanging out with my other friends while we each work on projects.

In short: my guess is your confusion is mainly borne of a misunderstanding of the hobby.

My suggestion? Give it a shot! YouTube has made it easier than ever to learn, and a pair of sticks and a ball of yarn will cost you less than ten bucks. You never know, you might love it!

Self-taught here as well, though I haven't done any knitting for nearly a decade now. It was always something for my hands to do while watching TV.

It’s like any other creative hobby — woodworking, metalworking (computer programming?) etc. There’s joy in using your hands and brain to make something enjoyable out of low-value materials. There’s joy in being able to show people “Look what I made!”

Creative hobbies do tend to be a bit male-coded or female-coded for various reasons. For some hobbies I suspect that the very single-sexiness of the hobby is part of the appeal — women join knitting circles as an excuse to hang out with other women, men go golfing as a way to hang out with other men.