The second in our lifestyle series of guest posts is Crochet enthusiast, tutor, and expert, Gaëlle Henriet, sharing her thoughts on the latest growing trend in self-care and wellbeing. Gaëlle is known for her love of all things yarn and having endless knowledge and amazing patience, making her a fantastic tutor!
Staying Positive through Lockdown and Beyond
We’ve now been asked to stay at home on and off for almost a year. Nobody really knows how things will evolve, but there are reasons to be optimistic.
Whatever the future holds, it’s important to come up with new ways to practice self-care that involve no face-to-face interaction with people outside of our household or bubble. This can be achieved by partaking in activities that we can do on our own, or virtually with another person, and which keep the mind busy and lift the mood.
Crafting as Self-Care
One of these possible self-care practices is crafting. Whatever the craft involved, making something engages both your brain and your hands. This has been recognised as being greatly beneficial for mental and physical health, keeping anxiety and stress at bay, as well as lowering blood pressure.
Why is Crafting Good for Mental Health?
Initially, learning a new craft requires a lot of concentration. You’re not just creating a thing with your hands; you’re also creating millions of new neuron connections in your brain. When you’re focused on learning something new, that requires all of your brainpower, there is no space left in your head for negative thoughts, fear or anxiety.
Go with the Flow!
Then, when you’re a bit more confident with this newly acquired skill and you immerse yourself in it, you are likely to find yourself in what is called a state of flow.
This means, again, that you’re so focused on what you’re creating and enjoying the activity in itself so much, that there’s no room for anything else in your brain. It’s like a little escape, without leaving your chair.
Even your perception of time may be altered, and a couple of hours may pass in what seemed to you like the blink of an eye. But then you see the item you’ve been making, the tangible result of your activity, and that in itself is very rewarding and likely to boost your self-esteem.
Mindfulness
So, clearly, crafting can be used as a form of mindfulness practice: being fully focused on what you’re doing and on nothing else. On the other end of the spectrum, some crafts can also provide a deliciously mindless activity – because sometimes, nothing else will do!
Crochet Will Have you Hooked!
My specific area of expertise is crochet (I’ve been crocheting for ten years and teaching crochet for almost seven), so that’s the example I will take. Extremely easy, repetitive crochet patterns, for example if you’re making a blanket using just the same stitch over and over and over, can be a satisfyingly mindless activity.
Repetitive crochet patterns like these require very little concentration, but keeps your hands busy, so you can be doing something else at the same time, like watching television, listening to an audiobook or a podcast, or even having a conversation with somebody in your household or on Zoom. Some people have also found crochet a helpful way to keep their hands from reaching for the biscuit jar or for another cigarette.
Yarn Love
I think I love crochet so much because it is an extraordinarily sensory experience. The crochet hooks that I buy tend to be aluminium sets, each hook size in a different colour. It’s like a pretty rainbow of hooky tools. They’re very smooth and just very nice to have in your hand.
But of course, the star of the show is the yarn – the softer, the better. If you feel you need a bit of a mood boost, using bright colours, especially some nice sunshine yellow, does wonders. If you need to calm down, going for pale blues or even shades of grey are sure to help.
And if you decide to opt for natural animal fibres, especially for sheep’s wool that has NOT been superwash treated, but just washed, spun, and dyed, then you’re also in for an olfactory treat. There’s nothing quite like the smell of sheep’s wool! As a material, sheep’s wool has so many amazing properties, I could write a whole other blog post about this. (I think I will actually!)
So, Is Crafting for You?
Another benefit of crafting is that it’s an activity that has tangible rewards. When you have finished a project, you have an actual object to show for your efforts. You can say “I made this!” and feel pride in your achievement. That’s quite a big self-esteem booster!
But you might be worried that taking up a new craft is not something for you because you’re not a creative person. I thought that for a very long time about myself, and yet here I am, avid crocheter and part-time crochet tutor.
First of all, when you think of “being creative”, are you actually thinking of “being artistic”? These are two different things! You can be creative without being artistic, believe me, I have not a single artistic bone in my body. But I can be creative. Being creative includes using tools and raw materials and following instructions to make something. That’s what much of crocheting is about: following a pattern to make an item. And that’s a creative practice. You don’t have to design your own crochet clothes to be creative with crochet!
Get stuck in!
Crochet is actually one of the easiest yarn crafts to take up. It’s easier to learn crochet basics than knitting basics. Maybe because there is only one implement involved, but mostly, I would say, because when you’re a crochet novice, undoing part of your work and restarting in order to fix mistakes is much more straightforward.
I hope I’ve convinced you that crafting in general, and crochet in particular, is good for you.
To have an optimal, frustration-free start, a 1:1 session with an experienced tutor, who has a tried-and-tested online teaching setup and can answer all your questions as well as provide you with feedback in real time, is no doubt the best!
For more information on how Gaëlle can help you take up the relaxing and beneficial craft that is crochet…
Visit https://gaelleinwales.com email: gaelle@gaelleinwales.com
Gaëlle can also be found on Facebook @gaelleinwales
You can even join Gaëlle’s Facebook community of both keen and aspiring crocheters.
Here are a few testimonials from some of Gaëlle’s students:
“Gaëlle has a lovely reassuring teaching style that is motivating.” – Sheryn A
“Gaëlle is such a good tutor, everything is clearly explained (brilliant handouts) and if you do make a mistake, she shows you where it went wrong and shows you so clearly how to correct it.” – Jackie G
“Gaëlle is very knowledgeable, extremely affable and she flexes her approach to meet varying standards and speeds of learning.” – Carmen G
“Gaëlle is such a good teacher; very patient and answered all my questions. I would thoroughly recommend her.” – Diane P
