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Dr Mia Hobbs is a Clinical Psychologist who is passionate about the mental health benefits of knitting.
She also hosts the podcast Why I Knit.
She and Paula explore how we can use craft, and knitting in particular, to benefit our mental health – and how this is especially relevant for health professionals.
You can find Mia at www.therapeuticknitting.org and on Instagram @knittingistherapeutic
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Transcript
[music]
Paula Redmond: Hi, I’m Dr. Paula Redmond, a clinical psychologist, and you are listening to the When Work Hurts podcast. On this show, I want to explore the stories behind the statistics of the mental health crisis facing healthcare professionals today, and to provide hope for a way out through compassion, connection, and creativity. Join me as I talk to inspiring clinicians and thought leaders in healthcare about their unique insights, and learn how we can support ourselves and each other when work hurts.
Today, I’m joined by Dr. Mia Hobbs, clinical psychologist and host of the popular podcast, Why I Knit. Mia weaves her passion for the well-being benefits of knitting into her work as a psychologist. I began by asking her when and how she began to bring these two worlds together.
Mia Hobbs: It actually dawned on me later than it should have done, probably. I was taught to knit as a child, but I first started knitting again because my mum said– When I first started my doctorate, I was doing my first-year exams, and she’d met somebody whose daughter had also done the clinical psychology doctorate, and had learned to brick lay. Even though she didn’t actually need a brick wall in her garden, she really had a very strong need to do something that was completely different to psychology. My mom said, “You need to learn to knit,” and mostly to just keep her happy, I did. She said, “You can already do it,” and she just taught me the basics.
Then we went to John Lewis the next day and bought some yarn, and sent me back to London and I started knitting a big shawl. That’s when I started. She did sow the seed, I suppose, of it being helpful for my mental health, even though she didn’t probably say it in that way. I think I was just doing it in the background. There were a couple of other people on my training course who also coincidentally started knitting, and maybe I encouraged them a bit.
I think it wasn’t really until I was leaving the NHS that I was more consciously thinking about combining the two. It probably started as a bit of a joke when I was leaving saying, “Oh, I’m going to be running therapeutic knitting groups.” We had knitted some baby blankets for a colleague who had twins. Lots of people came up to me and said, “Can you help me knit something for these babies?” I thought, actually, it’s quite challenging to knit a hat or a cardigan if you’re not really a knitter or you’re a very rusty knitter. I ended up buying some yarn, giving everybody some, and then they knitted squares, and then I’d crochet them into blankets.
I think through doing that together on random lunch breaks, it did feel like it made a big difference to the team around really. I ended up having different conversations with colleagues. People stopped working and didn’t eat lunch at their desks. I think that made me think a bit more about it. I think leaving the NHS was difficult for me. It wasn’t really in my plan. I also at that point had started to use knitting a bit more deliberately. I deliberately chose a big project that was my transition project, I suppose, to take me through that transition of leaving and starting something new that I didn’t really quite know what it would look like.
Paula: Tell me about that project when you made that deliberate choice. What did you choose? What project did you choose?
Mia: I chose a big shawl which was actually double knitted. There’s quite a lot of nice metaphors really. It’s a shawl that’s knitted in two parts, that you then knit them together once you’ve knitted the same thing twice. In a way, it was quite a nice metaphor for these two parts of my career coming together. I’m not sure I consciously chose it because of that. I think I saw lots of pretty versions on Instagram at the time and wanted to make one. I felt like I could allow myself to buy a– It was quite a lot of yarn. I chose some nice yarn, and I’d been thinking about knitting it for a while. It felt like this was my thing I was going to work on.
I think, probably, it gave me a sense of something like a project that was predictable and under my control, when actually things career-wise were turning out to be completely different to how I expected. I didn’t expect to leave the NHS really in my career, and suddenly that was what was happening. I think it helped. It helped that it was big because I think, actually, it allowed me to make space for that transition, that, actually, despite wanting to just do it and the new venture to be a success, that doesn’t happen overnight, obviously. I think it helped me to see it as a bit of a process. Actually, I really struggled to finish it.
I did the first half and then starting from the beginning, as in my career, felt like I had to take a big deep breath before, “Oh, now I have to cast on the same stitches and knit what I’ve just done all over again.” I think starting from the beginning was hard in both ways, and it took me a while to get going on the second one. It probably was not finished for a year after I left my NHS job, but it’s really nice to have it now, this huge rectangular shawl. It’s nice to have that kind of- that will always signify that change, I suppose, for me.
Paula: It still holds a lot of meaning for you, the shawl?
Mia: Yes, definitely.
Paula: It sounds like, in what you’re describing, there’s something about the actual process of doing it, but also the finished product also has meaning for you.
Mia: Yes, and I think that’s definitely true of my relationship with knitting. The process is probably the most important thing for me. If I was stranded on a desert island with one ball of unappealing brown yarn, I would still for sure knit and unravel it and knit it again. It is really nice to have the memories in the finished objects intended to be gifted to somebody.
Paula: Can you tell us more about the process? If we think about knitting in particular, what is it about knitting that can be helpful in terms of well-being?
Mia: Betsan Corkhill is a– she was originally a physiotherapist and is the expert on therapeutic knitting. She’s got a knitting equation that breaks down some of the factors that are helpful or thought to be helpful in knitting. One of the things is the hand movements. They’re complicated movements, which are with both hands and crossing the midline of the body. If we think about therapies like EMDR, there’s a lot of similarities, I suppose, in their repetitive soothing movements. There’s an idea that those type of movements are soothing for our brains.
We as humans spend a lot of time doing less and less things with our hands and doing more and more things on screens or in our brains. In a way, it probably is more of a different type of movement that we’re not doing so much of anymore. There’s an idea that there’s something soothing about those repetitive movements. I think knitting specifically is quite good because it’s very easy to do a tiny bit of it. I think, certainly, when I’m using it in my work, if somebody’s feeling anxious or they’re feeling low in mood, it can feel difficult to get going with anything, but with knitting, you could just do a couple of stitches and still make progress towards a bigger goal.
Even for myself, I find I also sew on a sewing machine to make clothes, but it’s a lot more difficult to find the time to get everything out, set it all up. Whereas, with knitting, I could just stick it in my bag, and if I suddenly- the bus is stuck in traffic, I can knit, or if you get a few seconds, you can do a little bit and it all makes progress. I think that is quite helpful, especially if we’re feeling low, and you could just do a tiny bit in five minutes.
The other things I suppose are that it gives you what Betsan Cockhill calls an enriched environment. That is the idea of being creative, there’s color, there’s different textures, there’s the idea of making safe mistakes that you can unravel it and redo it. That it gives you an opportunity, I suppose, to be a bit playful with something that is not related to your job. It doesn’t really matter, you can’t really get it wrong in any dramatic fashion. You’ve always got what you started with unless you get the scissors out. It’s quite accessible to lots of people. It doesn’t take much time or many props. I think the other thing is it’s portable, you could do it in a waiting room.
For people who do feel like they access a sense of calm, if, for example, they were anxious about social situations or going on public transport or the dentist, you could bring it with you. I feel like certainly for me, that feels like a really great thing, even though I don’t feel, for example, massively worried about the dentist. I don’t love the idea of going for a filling. It feels nice to be able to sit in the waiting room. I think I’m someone who feels like they’ve got a lot of pressure on their time. It feels like I’m doing something useful or getting something out of little, tiny pockets of time that I happen to have waiting for someone.
Paula: I can really resonate with all of that. I think, for me, I learnt to knit as a child as well. We had to do Lent knitting at school. For the 40 days of Lent, we were all supposed to knit squares, and then they’d all get knitted up usually by our mums or grandparents at the end and donated to charity. We all had to learn. It was when I was an adult and actually after the birth of my first child, where– I’d always had a creative outlet, I’d always probably gone to an art class or something, but then when my son was born, I couldn’t go out, couldn’t do anything. Picked it up again as a way of just having something really accessible that I could– The house didn’t have to be clean. I didn’t have to have a clear table. I could just pick it up and do something. I think that’s–
Mia: I think a lot of people return to it when their kids are small because it’s a time when it’s so challenging to have any time for yourself or anything for yourself. A lot of the tasks you end up doing, like keeping a small human alive, you can’t really– the human is hopefully still there by the end of the day, but you can’t really see a lot of like, oh, there were 12 nappies I changed today or all of those tasks reset again the next day, don’t they?
Paula: Yes. I think that thing of, especially being a first-time mom, just feeling completely incompetent at everything, and that sense, as you said, of not really feeling like I had much control of my life or anything. Being able to have some concrete evidence of making progress.
Mia: Yes. I think the control thing, actually, is something I’ve thought more about recently, the idea of having a thing that– Because I think a lot of people I’ve spoken to in the podcast were thinking about their experiences in COVID, for example, and the idea of everything, the whole world is quite scary and unpredictable in a way that we’ve never experienced before. The idea of having a particular knitting project, that is something I can think about and literally switch off the news or thinking about the big scary world, but this, like I’ve got the recipe and I know how it’s going to turn out.
Paula: I remember also a time when I was working in the NHS in mental health services and just feeling really working, really giving so much every day, but not feeling like I was making a difference. There was a time when we were having our garden redone and paths laid and things. I would come home every day and this path was built, or this flower bed was done, or a fence was up. I remember feeling so jealous of the garden landscape man because he could look back at the end of his day and see, “Oh my gosh, I made a garden.” Whereas I felt like I was looking back at the end of my day and thinking, what have I done? What I have achieved? I’m exhausted, I’m drained, but what difference have I made to the world?
Mia: I think that’s really interesting. I remember having similar conversations actually with my friends from my clinical training when we just qualified. Because I think up until that point, to be a clinical psychologist, it’s quite a long journey. Then your life changes once it’s finished and you think, “Oh great, I’ve got there,” but all of the energy and drive, and being someone who’s, to some extent, been good at or lucky at jumping through various hoops, then there’s a kind of score on whether you’re making progress. Then all of a sudden there isn’t. Thinking about, oh, it would be quite appealing to be in a career where there was a really clear correlation with hard work and outcomes, because that isn’t the world that we inhabit really.
Paula: I know that in your podcast you have talked to lots of health professionals or people who work in a health context. I wonder what your reflections are of how knitting in particular can be useful and relevant to health professionals in particular.
Mia: It’s interesting. There do seem to be quite a few health professionals who knit. Maybe I’ve attracted them because I am one and they’ve been interested in the podcast. I suppose I had this theory actually from salsa dancing, which I used to do. I went to salsa and there were loads of doctors there. I didn’t really understand why there were so many doctors at salsa. Then I suppose I developed a theory, where my husband, who’s a doctor, came along mainly for my sake. He quite liked the idea of, if you’re busy thinking about counting arm and leg movements, you can’t possibly be thinking about work.
I think as health professionals, we do have quite stressful, busy jobs. I suppose I call it just active relaxation. I suppose I sometimes feel like in order to relax, my brain needs to be completely absorbed in a thing. It can’t be a passive switching off thing like watching Netflix because that’s not enough for my brain. My brain will freelance and go looking for stress or tasks or making to-do lists, whereas if I’m knitting something extremely complicated, I just have to pay attention. That relaxes me. I think that has been a topic that has come up time and time again, needing something sometimes quite complicated that it absorbs all your brain.
Quite a few of the health professionals I’ve spoken to have been doctors. There has also been a theme of, they’re quite high-achieving people, I suppose. You could see in the way they talk about knitting, that they like the, you’ve never run out of challenges. There’s always a new, they want to finish projects, they want to learn the next thing. I think that is appealing to some of them. I think also there’s something to do with, maybe we are people who feel a strong drive to be useful to others. The idea of knitting for other people, gifting to- we want there to be a purpose or a point. I think I could see a parallel there with health professionals.
I think we don’t always have the opportunity to be that creative maybe in our jobs. Maybe we as psychologists a bit more. I don’t know. I feel like there’s something about it just being very different, like that’s a different part of our brains we’re stimulating when we are doing something creative. Certainly, for me, I think I crave making things with my hands. For me, knitting also has the benefit of it producing something that then is useful. For example, I tried various other things and doing some cross-stitch and things, but what I didn’t really love was the fact that once it’s finished, I didn’t really know what to do with it.
Whereas I like now that when it’s finished now, it becomes something I wear on a daily basis, like my cardigan. I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect this, but once I started wearing things I’d made to work, I did really like that people noticed and said– Because for me, it turned a compliment about my appearance into something more valuable to me, like, “Oh, you’re clever. Oh, you’re creative,” which to me feels more meaningful than, “You look nice.” I did like that.
Paula: I was wondering a couple of things. I was wondering about the kind of nonverbal processing that knitting might allow or enable. What you were talking about a bit earlier, that kind of repetitive movement that you really need to slow down to do it. You can’t be knitting and running around doing other things. You have to stop, you have to slow down. I guess there’s an advantage of that, particularly if you’re working in a very high-threat environment, that’s just the benefit of being able to slow down and calm your nervous system.
Also, as health professionals, although often it can feel very normal, we’re often exposed to a lot of trauma and distress in our work, which sometimes we can talk about, other times we can’t. Especially at home, lots of people don’t want to talk about work at home for lots of reasons. I don’t know, what do you think? Do you think the process of knitting can be helpful in that sense of being able to process difficult stuff?
Mia: I definitely think a lot of people have spoken about the idea of it helping to slow them down or ground them. Somebody recently was talking about the idea of it literally, physically seat-belting them to their chair, she said. That was on another podcast, a knitting podcast that I listen to. I think maybe there are those of us who are busy and use busyness as part of a coping strategy to not think about things, but that’s a way of enforcing yourself to slow down, which we all need to sometimes. Like you said, I think that’s a good point about the nonverbal processing.
Quite a few people have spoken about that in relation to things like bereavement, for example. The idea of it being, especially if you’re knitting with somebody else, the idea of having a way of companionship but without necessarily having to talk about things that might feel difficult or that ultimately people can’t say anything that’s going to change the thing you’re feeling very sad about, and maybe you don’t want to talk all the time. Certainly, definitely, people have mentioned on the podcast the idea of using their hands as a way of feeling, like accessing calm and processing working things through, and thinking about things in a different way, but probably in a way that feels easier.
A lot of people on the podcast have also spoken about the idea of failing at meditation. It really does seem that there is a collection of knitters who feel like they have not been great at accessing standard mindfulness or meditation, but are aware of the idea that that would be something helpful, but have found knitting an easier way of doing that. I definitely think I would include myself in that.
I physically feel like it lowers my blood pressure. I’ve never been a smoker, but I remember my grandma used to smoke, and after meals, it would be like she really wanted a cigarette. You could see that she physically was a bit jangly and wanted a cigarette. I feel like that was knitting. I do really feel like it grounds me in the same quite physical way really.
Paula: I’m also always aware of a sense of discomfort if I’m between projects, if I finish something and then haven’t quite got the next thing yet.
Mia: I would never allow myself to that.
[laughter]
Paula: [crosstalk] You’d always have something lined up already.
Mia: Yes. I don’t make very fast progress because I got more than one thing on the go at once because I like to have different tasks with different kind of requirements. I think at the moment, I think much more about the process of knitting than I do about the– I wouldn’t knit something I didn’t want, but I think much more about what do I need it to offer me right now.
I like to have something more simple that I could knit if I was in a waiting room, waiting for children to do an afterschool club, or doing a Zoom training. I would find it much easier to sit still and listen to a workshop if I was knitting, and then something more complicated maybe in the evenings, where I feel like actually it needs to absorb my brain a bit. It’s more of that active relaxation I was talking about. I would not allow myself to have finished everything on in one case so I didn’t have anything to work on.
Paula: The other thing I was thinking about, which maybe applies to creative pursuits more generally, but I think for health professionals, there can often be a sense of working in a really dehumanizing context, where you’re a small cog in this big machine and just a number on a rota, replaceable, not really seen as a person. Often, people’s basic human needs aren’t met at work.
I guess there’s something about the creative process and making unique decisions about something that can help us stay connected with our humanity and also be seen in that way. I was thinking about you and your cardigan. Something about people noticing something unique about you, seeing you is something really nice.
Mia: Yes, definitely true. I think, especially in big organizations like the NHS, the opportunity to be creative or to make changes, I suppose, for me felt increasingly small. The opportunity to do that felt increasingly corporate. The wheels turn very slowly in any big organization. There’s 800 people who have to sign off on doing anything different on you. This is quite nice that you can have a new project and you’re completely the boss of– You see that cardigan. I suppose I quite like the planning process as well. I needed to have this yellow cardigan that I had in my head, and I went through all the steps to making it happen really. That does give a sense of achievement.
I think the other thing that made me think of is also a thing people talk about a lot on the podcast is their connections to other people. Having a different community of people who are not– I don’t about you, but many of my friends are healthcare workers. In a way, it’s quite nice to meet other people from completely different walks of life, where you have just this different thing that you connect over. It isn’t your work and it’s not stressful, and it’s about yarn or patterns. That brings a lot of people joy on a different level, and being a bit creative. I think we do have quite a difficult, challenging job and spend a lot of time with distress. I feel like, for me, it’s definitely an area of my life where it is just about the pleasure of it, the joy of it, really.
Paula: I was thinking what you were saying about connecting with other people and also the role of making something for someone else can really help you stay connected with those other identities, those other roles you might have in your life that are outside of work. I mostly knit stuff for other people, people having babies, or kids stuff, or tea cozies. That feels really important too. It’s meaningful when I’m being able to nurture those identities that can often get neglected when we are very caught up in work.
Mia: Certainly, a lot of people on my podcast have talked about this. Like a way of sending a knitted hug to somebody, especially in COVID when people had a new grandchild who was born and they couldn’t physically see them. I certainly feel like that about knitting for other people. It’s a way of- it’s a lot of hours that go into anything you’ve knitted for somebody -of thinking about the person and knitting all the love and affection into the object. I think that definitely is part of it.
I think, actually, going back to what you said about having a sense of individuality, I certainly feel like it’s changed my relationship with clothes. That it’s a way of just having a different relationship. I don’t look at clothes in shops anymore. I think about, what do I want to make? Then it has another life as the clothes that I wear. I think that was nice actually going into work. It is a bit of, I suppose, carefully considered self-disclosure with your clients, that being a bit more you in the room. I’ve decided it’s one of the things I do talk about myself.
Paula: The other thing you mentioned that I think is interesting and important is the idea about making safe mistakes. Were those the right words? Were those the words you said?
Mia: Yes, that’s what I talk about, is safe mistakes.
Paula: Which I think is a real challenge for health professionals, isn’t it? I think we are selected, we’re often highly perfectionistic people, but also often working in a situation where mistakes are really high stakes and there’s a lot of scrutiny. Making a mistake is really anxiety-provoking. Having an opportunity to play around with that.
Mia: I think, certainly, I really feel like I’ve taken a lot of value from knitting into the rest of my life really in terms of my relationship to mistakes or having to unravel things. I think I certainly have the concept, I think most knitters do, that amazing, excellent knitters make mistakes all the time. They unravel stuff all the time. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could say that about other things in our lives. Amazing parents make mistakes. How does it feel? It feels different, doesn’t it?
I think it’s made me more patient, for example, definitely with starting up in private practice, having a business. The idea of, you feel you want to have all the answers and get it all sorted at the beginning, but that’s not how it works. I feel like knitting has made me be more patient. Just recently, I unraveled an entire torso of a colorwork sweater, all of it, because it didn’t fit the way I wanted it to. I don’t think that was perfectionism because I didn’t have to do it. I didn’t feel anxious about doing it. I’d already knitted the same sweater. It fits too tight. I don’t like how it fits. I was knitting another version in order for it to be a more relaxed fit sweater and it didn’t because all of the colorwork, the floats are too tight.
I’ve reknitted it and I feel entirely at peace with that decision because I love knitting. I’m going to knit. I’ve got best value for money out of this way because I’ve knitted the whole thing twice. I feel like I’m more patient with myself in other realms of my life, probably, because of that. It’s okay to unravel the stuff that’s not working.
Paula: Yes, I agree. I think there is something about it being a really helpful practice ground for developing self-compassion.
Mia: I think in the groups I’m running, I do find something we come up against very quickly is the idea of panicking when you’ve made a mistake, and that you ultimately choose what you do about that. Whether you can just carry on and live with it, or you can say, “Actually, no, that’s going to annoy me. I’m going to go back and sort it out.” You can choose. You’re the boss. It’s a very safe way of practicing, it not being perfect or seeing your progress, because it wasn’t perfect at the beginning, and now look, it looks prettier. It’s more even and more relaxing.
Paula: If I think about the definition of compassion being a sensitivity to the suffering of self and others, and a commitment to alleviate it, that first part about being sensitive to the suffering of others, we need to be able to tune in to what’s going on, particularly if we’re thinking about self-compassion, and just that process you described of checking in. Like, what do I need right now? What is going to be the process that’s going to be most helpful for me right now? It’s also good practice for that.
Mia: I think that’s the thing that experienced knitters say that they maybe haven’t thought about before. Like, for example, if they’ve listened to the podcast, the idea of thinking about their knitting as a part of their self-care and thinking, what do I actually need right now? Do I need to knit something complicated? Do I need to knit something fluorescent pink? Do I need something really easy that’s not going to annoy me?
Actually, for some people who I’ve interviewed to work, more of their work-life is in the craft industry, or, for example, some people who are high-achieving people who might have been medics, for example, have got to the point where they have quite high standards for themselves and then think, actually, this isn’t relaxing anymore, and they need to go– sometimes we need to go and do something else where we don’t have expectations of ourselves. That might be painting by numbers or making something out of polymer clay or doing Lego. I think we need to be open to the transferability of the idea of therapeutic knitting. It doesn’t have to be knitting.
Certainly, in my client group, I work with children and adolescents, and often, knitting is not something the customer is for, but we can use the idea behind engaging in something, some kind of therapeutic craft that might give them a sense of achievement. It might give them a little spark of joy in their day. Might help them switch off from revision. That might be Lego, or it might be something scratch art or painting by numbers or something completely different.
Paula: The importance of psychological flexibility in how we look at it too.
Mia: Yes, because knitting won’t be for everybody.
Paula: If we think about some of the barriers to knitting, knitting isn’t going to be for everybody, but for people who might want to get into it or develop it more. What are the common barriers that come up for people?
Mia: I’d say, often, I think I’m still not massively– I still think I probably think carefully about who I mention it to, and maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should mention it to everybody. Actually, when I was running a group in a primary school, I was curious. The SENCO had decided which pupils were going to come to the group, and I was wondering like, in terms of, for example, gender, who would be in the room. In the primary school, it was a very even split of boys and girls, and actually, everybody was up for– I said to them I want them to be interested in the idea of trying. They need to want to be there at least a little bit, or to be open to it, but they were. In a secondary school is an all-female group.
I wonder whether that has changed with age, or whether it’s down to the person who’s set up in terms of who they’ve thought to ask, or maybe they’ve asked boys and they’ve said no. I’m not sure. I should ask, probably. I think maybe the idea is about knitting being a more female thing. I do get quite a lot of people who say that someone’s tried to teach me and I was unteachable. I tried to learn as a child, and I just couldn’t do it. Those kind of things. I think a lot of us– I certainly learned as a child for a little while, it didn’t ever go anywhere, but I went back to it and it stuck. I think that’s a very common story.
Paula: What has the reception been to the work that you’re doing and your podcast? Did you feel like it is actually something that resonates?
Mia: I’ve been really overwhelmed by the response to the podcast. Lots of people have emailed me and messaged me on Instagram. In a way, there was this narrative already, I suppose. I think most people who knit feel it benefits their mental health. I think you could see that in small ways that I attributed, like I put that label on, I suppose. You’d see people selling enamel pins that I knit because punching people is frowned upon, which I suppose to me said, knitting is helping keeping me calm. I feel like there has been a really positive response to that.
I feel like also I’ve had emails from people saying that they’ve thought about their knitting differently as a result of listening to how we’ve talked about the benefits and mental health. They’ve thought about their projects differently or been more intentional about their knitting, rather than feeling, I’ve started this cardigan, I have to finish this cardigan, which I don’t think is always the right thing. I think the most important thing is, what’s it doing for me right now, and if this isn’t the right thing for me to be working on because I just don’t have the headspace for it right now, then I need to find something else. Or if I need a quicker sense of achievement, I can’t be working on a colorwork sweater that’s going to take me six months.
Paula: What would you say to people who might be listening to this and maybe are not knitters, and are curious about how to get into it, how to get started? What would you say?
Mia: I would say that if you’re interested in knitting, then it’s definitely worth giving it a go. Couldn’t really be easier now that you can learn so much on YouTube. I’ve made a PDF actually. If anybody wants one of those, they could send me an email about how to get started and why would you do it for your mental well-being because there are lots of YouTube videos out there teaching you to knit. I suppose I’ve gone through enough of them to know which are the really good ones with really good, clear instructions, or slow-motion videos, and good patterns for beginners.
The PDF has got those things in it, and it also tells you how to find, buy some needles and yarn that are the right size for each other because that is a bit like learning the lingo of a new thing. You have to be able to decode what size needles and that kind of thing, with some tips about not getting an overly fluffy yarn that’s going to get in a tangle easily and those kinds of things.
If knitting isn’t for you, then I would think about the idea of, if you were having a creative outlet, what would it need to offer you? Do I need something easy that I can already do? Do I need something complicated so I don’t think about work while I’m doing it, and to start there, really. Think about what appeals or maybe it’s something you’ve done before.
Paula: What about people who are established knitters and who might want to explore using knitting more intentionally for their well-being?
Mia: For me, I would still start with thinking about what am I knitting now and what is it doing for me? Is it giving me the relaxation I need? Is it giving me the challenge I need? What kind of project do I need? Thinking a bit more intentionally about planning projects. I think also, one of the helpful things about knitting is that you get a sense of achievement. I think sometimes deliberately monitoring your progress. Putting a safety pin in or a little rescue line so that you can see I actually have, especially when knitting something big, I have made progress.
Actually, Instagram is quite good for that. I often end up looking back at my previous Instagram posts and thinking, oh, I feel like this sweater is growing really slowly, but actually, that was only a month ago, and I’ve done loads since then. It’s also a really good place for inspiration. If you’re thinking about what do I want to make, you can see different versions of using a hashtag for a pattern of every single pattern out there. I think that’s been helpful for me in terms of inspiring me to find new things to knit.
I think the other thing I always encourage new and established knitters is to show and tell. To access the positive feedback of having someone to show your work to really and get– Kids are so good at that. They go and draw a picture and they’re desperate to show somebody. “Look at this, I’ve just drawn.” We just get out of the habit as grownups.
I certainly love and encourage my friends, who might not be- they’re not as fanatical as I am about knitting, but I’m like, I always love to see what you are knitting and that you’re proud that you’ve done this hat or whatever it is. To have someone in your life, even if they’re not a knitter, that you show things off to. It could be on Instagram also, is another way of doing it. Also, just to monitor how is this making me feel right now? I certainly feel like if I could rate my calm before knitting and then sit down and knit for 20 minutes, I would feel calmer afterwards.
Likewise, it doesn’t always go like that. If you feel like actually this is just annoying me right now, it’s too complicated, I’m stressing about where I am in the pattern, then maybe that’s not for me right now. Maybe it needs to go and sit in the naughty cupboard for a while and try to knit something else more simple.
Paula: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like to help support the podcast, please do share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. I’d love to connect with you, so do come and find me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can also sign up to my mailing list to keep up to date with future episodes and get useful psychology advice and tips straight to your inbox. All the links are in the show notes. Thanks again, and until next time, take good care.
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