Fiber Monday - Grief knitting
"When the arts become a regular practice -- the way you might improve nutrition, increase exercise, and prioritize sleep -- you unleash an innate tool that helps you navigate the peaks and valleys of your inner life. And the best news is that you don't have to be great, or even good, at making art to experience the benefits. In a study, Girija Kaimal, assistant dean for special research initiatives and an associate professor in the creative arts therapies program at Drexel University, found that for the majority of people, making art is physiologically calming. Girija explains, 'The study was set up with an art therapist in the room who could provide support as needed to allow for authentic self-expression. There was no judgement or expectation, rather participants were encouraged to focus on the process and to feel safe, thus reducing stress and anxiety.' She reminds us that anyone can do this at home with simple materials if they create without value judgements.
The arts offer a range of effective treatments for individual mental-health challenges, as well as our collective emotional zeitgeist. They improve our psychology by offering enhanced self-efficacy, coping, and emotional regulation. They improve our physiology by lowering stress-hormone response, enhancing immune function, and increasing cardiovascular reactivity. And that's just the beginning.
Over the last two decades, there have been thousands of studies with outcomes illuminating the reasons diverse arts practices, both as the maker and as a beholder, improve our psychological state. Take the work of Daisy Fancourt. She's a British psychobiology and epidemiology researcher at University College London who has been studying the effect of the arts on health, including a breakthrough study in 2020 involving tens of thousands of participants in the U.K. She and her two research partners used a sophisticated statistical technique that accounted for multiple variables in lifestyle, and they found that people who participated in arts activities more than once a week, or who attended cultural events at least once or twice per year, had significantly higher life satisfaction than those who did now. This was the same across socioeconomic levels. People who engaged in the arts were found to have lower mental distress, better mental functioning, and improved quality of life." (pp. 28-29) - Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
It was probably just as well we had rather cold and rainy weather up at the beach house this past week. It allowed me to prettty much sit on the couch for multiple days on end and do nothing but knit. (Okay, I read a bit, too, as the excerpt above shows.) Those of us who make things really didn't need multiple scientific studies to tell us that it is good for us in multiple ways. By spending days upon days knitting it kept my hands busy and by learning some new techniques it helped me brain to have something else to focus on other than my grief over losing Bristol. I'm not sure that grief knitting is the best time to learn a new skill, at least it is not the most efficient time to learn a new skill. That line about increased mental functioning? Not really in this case.
So what did I learn? Brioche for starters. Brioche for the non-knitters among you is a reversable, squishy rib stitch. While not difficult in its individual parts, putting all those parts in the correct order can be a bit challenging at first. But after day one, I did end up with a single color brioche sample.
It looks deceptively simple, doesn't it? What the photo doesn't convey is how very three-dimensional it is and how squishy.
Day 2 was two-color brioche. I actually lost track of the number of times I started this and then had to stop and rip it all out. It was probably closer to ten than a lower number. But I ended up with a sample. It is not spectacular knitting, but I think that the next time I try it, it will go much more smoothly. The front...
Day three brought increases and decreases. I went back to one color brioche for this; I knew I wasn't up for trying it with two. I love how organic the increases and decreases look.
Like all brioche, it, too, is reversable.
Finally, day four brought something different: German short rows. I have a copy of Knit in New Directions by Myra Wood and in it she has this amazing sampler with curving rows of different colors. I knew I wanted to try it the minute I saw it. There are a lot of short rows in it and I think I can say I'm pretty adept at them now. (The pink and white are handspun, the blue and gold are Cascade 220.)
And by day five, I felt as though I could do a little more. I played some games, I did a bit more reading, I ventured outside. Everything in me said that I needed to sit and knit and process, so that's what I did. It was needed.
(And I have no idea why some people can see all of the Kenzie photos and other cannot. I'll confer with MC, my personal tech support, and see what I can do to fix it.)
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