“I think people, they need something that’s for them just to concentrate on.” “There’s something about, you know, when your life is sort of falling apart you need to have create a purpose in it for yourself. And if that purpose is quite small, it doesn’t matter. It’s important. It’s something tangible.” “Something they can say, ‘Well, that’s mine. I’m going to do that today.’ And it’s worth getting up for, basically.” “It’s a release. It’s just a way of unwinding. And at least you have something at the end of it. And if it’s been a particularly stressful patch and you’re looking at what you see at the end of it, you go, ‘Yeah. That goes. That’s gone.’ And once it’s gone, then the stress is gone.” “Really interesting — it acts as almost like a biofeedback as well, because the more stressed you are, the tighter your stitches tend to be. So you can learn to knit more loosely and relax your shoulders and relax into the flow of the movement of your hands.” “I suppose I’m a mathematician at heart, and I quite like the idea of patterns, and I love following patterns and the process involved in when you see something written as a K and a P and then it turns into a glove. How does that work, you know? And it’s in two dimensions, and you convert that into three dimensions. It’s just fascinating. And I think Fair Isle’s a favorite, but I get very frustrated with it. And people say, ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and you know it’s not. You know there’s lots of mistakes in it.” “I’m an engineer, but don’t make that out as a techie, hard-boiled stuff. It’s making something that works. It was a bleed in the brain caused by overexertion, so it was very severe stroke. So it was just a case of working at it to get things back again.” “When we put our right hand into the left-hand space, it makes our brain work a little bit harder. But then, when you’re doing a bilateral movement, so using both hands, that cross in a coordinated pattern of movements, your hands have to work together in a very precise way, which means that your brain is working really hard. And if your hands are crossing the midline at the same time, then your brain has to work very much harder.” “I run a knitting club, so when people die, I end up getting their yarn. And that’s that sense — so when I’m using the yarn, I think, ‘Oh, this is Jean.’ And when I look at this, all these different people are knitted into the piece. When you teach someone to knit, you make a square. And people don’t want to knit a square, but what could you make with a square? So I come up with these tension birds, and the idea is that you make a bird, but it’s all based on squares. And it’s just the way that you stitch it together. Looking at the therapeutic benefits of knitting — it’s not just the making. It’s also the giving of a gift, giving away, and then the idea is that people just come together, that whole thing of there’s no right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. And you make your bird, and you give it away if you want to.” “Well, unfortunately, my son’s marriage had broken up, and — within a few weeks from having to move from his home into another house — and he was cycling to work, and he was hit at the back of his bike and was very seriously injured, indeed. And so I had to go up to hospital and be with him. And then he had a seven-hour operation, very long recovery. We had to have him at home. So life was difficult. And I needed something to keep my mind off. And so I decided to knit this blanket. I think it’s just really peaceful. I don’t know why, but it is. And I love all the colors. You choose a bit of wool, and oh, that goes nicely with that, and then you can embroider a bit on, and you make it your own thing with all the different colors and squares. And I call it my distraction blanket. And it was — it took me 18 months, but it was nearly 18 months before he was back to being more of himself.” “So it usually starts with ‘Who am and knitting for? What do I want to do? What’s the pattern? Because, especially if you’re knitting for somebody else that maybe going through a difficult time, as you knit, you’re thinking about them. It kind of reinforces some of the feelings I have for people. It helps you just to focus on them and their lives. I did some knitting for a hospital. The hospital was — it’s maternity, where there’s perinatal mortality, so little vests. You know where it’s going. And you try to do the best that you can for them.” “One of the things that came up in our study was that people told us that they learned that mistakes can be undone or you can cover the mistake with a button or a crocheted flower or something so that the mistakes don’t matter.” “I mean, I have terminal cancer, and I am not really on the ball sometimes, and my energy levels are really low. And I think that was the thing with me. Although I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do, I could still knit and crochet and do this, that and the other, just little things, and think, ‘Well, I’ve done that.’ I’ve unraveled a lot over the years — well, knitting and myself, possibly. Would you like a coffee now?” “Yeah, let’s.” [MUSIC PLAYING]