Lion Brand Notebook ®
Blogger and author Kathryn Vercillo is an expert in the area of using crafting to heal, having researched the topic extensively for her book Crochet Saved My Life. Read her previous blog posts on the Lion Brand Notebook here.
This is the final installment in my 6-part series on yarncrafting health and wellness. In this part I’ll go over the highlights of the first five articles to provide you with a total crafting wellness plan.
It’s important for you to know all of the different ways that knitting and crochet can help you to improve your physical health, mental health and general quality of life. The ten most important health benefits of yarncrafting include relief from depression and anxiety, boosts to self-esteem, community building and stress reduction. If you know how crafting helps people then you’re in a better position to figure out the right ways for it to help you!
Focus on a plan that is tailor-made for you. You don’t need to take advantage of every health benefit of crafting. Instead, you need to focus on the problems that you want to solve in your own life and the ways in which crochet or knitting can help resolve those problems. This post provides a step-by-step plan for making your own individualized craft wellness plan.
Track your success or failure. The only way that you’re going to know if your crafting wellness plan is working is to keep track of what works and what doesn’t. You should keep a journal about the things you’ve tried to feel better and whether or not it works, making adjustments accordingly. For example, you may make a plan to knit for half an hour every night before bed to reduce insomnia but after a week find that it doesn’t help. You can then adjust your plan; for example, you might accept that you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and try crafting then to get lulled back to sleep. Each person will benefit from different things in crafting. These inspiring interviews show how crochet helped heal five different people in totally unique ways.
Up until now, we’ve looked at ways to change and adapt your crafting in order to improve your health, but it works the other way around as well. You can work on improving your overall health in order to have a better crafting experience. Reducing hand pain and other muscle pain through yoga and stretching exercises can prolong your crafting time, for example. Taking steps to reduce depression and anxiety in your life can bring new motivation and creativity to your knit and crochet work. Learn all about how to improve your health to improve crafting here.
Our energy for crochet and knitting can wax and wane over time. Sometimes an injury or illness forces us to take a hiatus. There are many ways to stay inspired during a break. The ten ways discussed in last month’s article will help you add creativity, ambition and drive to your life and improve your total sense of wellness even when you can’t craft directly.
Start your crochet or knitting wellness plan today by telling us one thing that you’re going to do to get healthy with crafting!
Check out the other articles in this series:
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Ginger
After reading the series as you have posted it, I know I was definitely led to sign up for your newsletters a couple of years ago. While I pour over the patterns, laugh at the comic strips, ooh and aah over the yarns, the core of my soul is boosted by the crafting community. My worries and concerns [be they health, work, or family] seem to be lessened when participating in a craft.
Thank you seems like such a small token of appreciation for the wellness you have afforded me.
Petrina
Ginger,
That is wonderful to hear how Lion Brand’s newsletters and blog have touched our readers. Thank you for sharing!
Petrina