This week I went to see a beautiful and moving documentary called The Nettle Dress. I had not read up about it and thought it would be about sustainability and slow fashion and to an extent it was, but the main theme was about a man working through his grief by processing nettles from the growing plants into a dress over a period of 7 years. He cut the nettles, retted them, hand spun the fibre on a drop spindle and wove the cloth. He even spun the thread he sewed the dress with. It was amazing to watch and my head was buzzing with ideas about the nettle fibre itself but my main take away was about how textile craft can help people cope with emotional turmoil.
It reminded me too of a recent animation that I saw called Visible Mending – Emotional Repair through wool – which explores the effect that knitting has on the human brain to help people reconnect with, and repair, themselves. You can find a link to it here. The case studies it refers to include a software engineer who relearned knitting to recover fine motor skills after a stroke, and artist who uses knitting as a medium to connect communities, a mother who knitted to process anxiety about her injured son and a person with cancer who knits to shape and celebrate her days. It is a lovely 8 minutes – really worth watching.
Knitting and crochet are excellent ways to manage one’s mental health. It is the repetitive nature of the work that sets these two apart from others – the rhythm allowing one to enter a flow state which creates a pleasurable sense of well-being. I would say that spinning is the same – the Nettle Dress documentary reflects this, and I have experienced the peace that a rhythmic task can bring. Gardening does this too of course – Sue Stuart-Smith talks about the physical nature of the tasks themselves contributing to well-being in her excellent book The Well Gardened Mind. I suspect it is no coincidence that so many of my customers are also keen gardeners.
Obviously I do not inquire deeply into the personal lives of my regular customers and attendees at the knit and natter sessions here in the shop, but I have gleaned enough information from general chat to know that some of them have found comfort or a distraction from the emotional turmoil in their lives through knitting or crochet. Some use knitting to get through physical pain and discomfort. I myself find that in difficult times knitting can provide a way of emptying my mind of cares and worries for a while as I focus on the rhythm of the process and the pattern, the added bonus being the knowledge that I will get something lovely (I hope) at the end of the process too! I would be very interested to know if you also use knitting or crochet or other forms of textile craft to help you process difficult emotions.