Yarn Emoji

The yarn emoji shows a ball of yarn with a loose strand trailing off, the kind you'd see mid-project on a knitter's couch or tangled in a cat's paws. Its primary meaning is straightforward: crafting. Knitters, crocheters, and fiber artists adopted it instantly when it dropped in 2018, using it to tag WIPs (works in progress), finished objects, and yarn haul photos. But yarn carries a second, older meaning rooted in nautical slang: 'spinning a yarn' means telling a long, winding story, and the emoji gets used that way too. Send it when someone is about to launch into an epic tale, when you're recounting something convoluted, or when a friend's text chain is stretching past paragraph six. On Discord and Facebook Messenger, some communities use it as a quirky alternative to the thumbs-up emoji for showing approval. It also doubles as a cozy-season signifier: pair it with hot cocoa and blankets to signal a night in. The yarn emoji belongs to anyone who makes things with their hands, tells stories with their words, or wants to communicate 'I'm staying in and that's the plan.'

Dominates craft TikTok and Instagram. The #crochet hashtag alone has 37.3 billion TikTok views and 5.2 million posts. Knitting and crochet creators use the yarn emoji in bios, captions, and product listings on Etsy. It also appears in cozy aesthetic posts, cat memes, and the occasional storytelling thread marker on Twitter/X.

Almost never flirty. The yarn emoji is firmly in hobby-sharing and cozy-vibes territory. If someone sends it in a romantic context, they're signaling domestic comfort rather than attraction.

• •Friendly: sharing a craft project photo with 🧶
• •Friendly: reacting to a long story with 🧶
• •Romantic only if: 'I made this for you 🧶' (the act of handmaking something is the signal, not the emoji)

The yarn emoji exists because one knitter got annoyed. Amberley Romo, a software developer in Austin, TX who'd been knitting since 2013, noticed there was no emoji for the craft she practiced daily. She spent an evening in a coffee shop drafting a proposal, then launched yarnemoji.com to build support. The project stalled until journalist Amanda Hickman found the site and reached out. Hickman had independently noticed the emoji keyboard had tools for every trade except textiles. Together they submitted a formal craft emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium on July 28, 2017 (document L2/17-249), requesting four emojis: ball of yarn, spool of thread, safety pin, and needle and thread. Three were approved for Unicode 11.0 in 2018. The needle was initially rejected because the committee thought the spool of thread covered it. Hickman persisted, resubmitting until it was approved for Unicode 13.0 in 2020. The yarn emoji's origin is a case study in grassroots emoji activism: two strangers connected through a simple website and changed the keyboard for millions of crafters.

Proposed in L2/17-249 (July 28, 2017) by Amberley Romo and Amanda Hickman, supported by Emojination. Accepted for Unicode 11.0 (June 2018). The proposal argued that textile crafts were a billion-dollar global industry with no emoji representation despite emojis existing for sports, musical instruments, and office supplies.

Approved in Unicode 11.0 (2018) as 'Ball of Yarn' under code point U+1F9F6. Part of a four-emoji craft proposal submitted July 28, 2017, alongside spool of thread (🧵), safety pin (🧷), and needle and thread. The proposal was co-authored by Amberley Romo, a software developer and avid knitter from Austin, TX, and Amanda Hickman, a journalist who noticed the emoji set had tools for every trade except textiles. Three of the four were accepted for Unicode 11.0; the sewing needle took two more years, finally landing in Unicode 13.0 (2020).

1. 2017Craft emoji proposal L2/17-249 submitted to Unicode Consortium
2. 2018Approved in Unicode 11.0 as 'Ball of Yarn' (U+1F9F6)
3. 2018Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft release initial designs
4. 2020Companion emoji 🪡 Sewing Needle finally approved in Unicode 13.0
5. 2021Google redesigns to flat style in Android 12 Material You update

Knitting and crochet carry different cultural weight around the world. In Scandinavian countries, knitting is a point of national pride: Iceland's lopapeysa sweaters are cultural icons, and Norway practically considers knitting a national sport (they even broadcast slow-TV knitting marathons). In Japan, amigurumi (crocheted stuffed figures) has become a major export and TikTok phenomenon with 27.3 million posts. In parts of South America, traditional textile arts like Peruvian knitting and Bolivian weaving are UNESCO-recognized cultural heritage. In the UK, knitting circles organized as 'Knitting Nannas Against Gas' became genuine protest movements. In the US, the 2017 Pussyhat Project saw an estimated 100,000 hand-knitted pink hats distributed at the Women's March, making yarn a political symbol overnight. Gen Z worldwide has reclaimed crochet from its 'grandma hobby' reputation, driven by TikTok tutorials and the slow fashion movement.

• •The yarn emoji was proposed by a software developer who knits. Amberley Romo drafted the proposal at a coffee shop and built yarnemoji.com to rally support.
• •The world's largest ball of twine sits in Cawker City, Kansas: 17,320 pounds, 40-foot circumference, built from nearly 8 million feet of sisal twine since 1953.
• •Tom Daley went viral knitting poolside at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. He now has a dedicated crafting Instagram with hundreds of thousands of followers.
• •The Harry Styles JW Anderson cardigan moment in February 2020 kicked off a global DIY crochet trend. The original retailed for €1,450; JW Anderson released the pattern for free after TikTok blew up with recreations.
• •Ravelry, the 'Facebook for knitters,' has over 9 million registered users and a database of nearly 1.2 million patterns.
• •A Cardiff University study of 3,500+ knitters found that the more frequently people knitted, the happier and calmer they reported feeling. Some said knitting rivaled medication for managing anxiety.
• •Yarn bombing (covering public objects in knitted fabric) was started by Magda Sayeg in Houston in 2005. International Yarn Bombing Day is June 11.
• •The idiom 'spinning a yarn' was first documented in 1819 in the Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux, describing sailors telling stories while literally spinning fibers into rope.
• •Ryan Gosling learned to knit on the set of Lars and the Real Girl and called it one of the most relaxing experiences of his life.
• •The global knitting and crochet market is valued at $29.4 billion in 2025, with handmade crochet clothing sales up 25% driven by the slow fashion movement.

• •Some people think 🧶 is a generic ball or toy. It's specifically yarn, not a ball of rubber bands or a toy ball.
• •Occasionally confused with being exclusively 'old lady' content. Gen Z has thoroughly reclaimed crochet and knitting as mainstream hobbies.
• •The cat-and-yarn pairing, while memetically popular, actually depicts something veterinarians strongly advise against. Cats swallowing string is a medical emergency.

• •Tom Daley knitting poolside at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics became one of the most iconic images of the Games, normalizing crafting for millions
• •Harry Styles wearing the JW Anderson patchwork crochet cardigan (February 2020) triggered a global TikTok DIY trend; the designer released the free pattern in response
• •The Pussyhat Project (2017 Women's March) distributed an estimated 100,000 hand-knitted pink cat-ear hats, making yarn a symbol of feminist protest
• •Magda Sayeg's yarn bombing movement, starting in Houston in 2005, turned knitting into guerrilla street art with installations on everything from trees to buses
• •Channel 4's 'The Game of Wool' competitive knitting show, inspired by the celebrity knitting trend from Tom Daley and Ryan Gosling

• •Code point: U+1F9F6. Single code point, no ZWJ sequences or variation selectors needed.
• •Shortcode: :yarn: on Slack and Discord. GitHub uses :yarn: as well.
• •The yarn emoji was added in Unicode 11.0 (2018), so it has broad platform support. Check for fallback on systems older than iOS 12.1, Android 9.0, or Windows 10 October 2018 Update.
• •If building a craft or hobby tagging system, group 🧶 with 🧵 (thread), 🪡 (sewing needle), 🧷 (safety pin), ✂️ (scissors), and 🪢 (knot) as the textile/craft emoji cluster.
• •Search indexing: map 🧶 to keywords: yarn, knitting, crochet, craft, fiber, wool, ball of yarn, spinning, textile.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.