Some knitting and crocheting inspiration!

[Longhorn]

I get the Lion Brand Yarn weekly newsletter and noticed this edition featured stories that people sent in on how knitting or crocheting changed their lives.

http://cache.lionbrand.com/cgi-bin/lionbrand/displayCustomerProjects.fcgi?projectType=shared&list=1/

I haven't read them all but I especially enjoyed this one:

After serving several years as a Navy Medic attached to the Marines and surviving Iwo Jima, my brother returned home in a state of shell shock. I remember seeing his hands shake uncontrollably and he was very withdrawn. He married and had a child, but his wife left him taking their daughter with her. My brother turned to alcohol and other destructive behaviors, becoming involved in one bad relationship after another.

One day as he was observing my mother (his step mother) crochet, he became fascinated with the process and asked her to teach him, which she did. My brother began to create afghans and found that crochet calmed him in a way that nothing else did. He finally stopped drinking, and found love and companionship in all the right places. He ultimately met and married a woman who adored him. I heard him tell my mother once that her teaching him to crochet saved his life.

Mom taught me to crochet when I was five years old. She also taught me to do embroidery and I later taught myself to knit. It is rare that I don’t have at least one, sometimes several, projects going. I find doing needle crafts relaxing and satisfying on so many levels. I’ve been teaching friends to knit and crochet for many years. I taught two of my granddaughters to crochet. These things add so much to my life; it is an important part of who I am. Even though I work full time, and practice Reiki when I’m not working, I still always have a project going. I knit at lunch time at work. I knit or crochet in the evenings. I take a project with me any time I know I will have some time to fill.

I love the new yarns and last Christmas I made 8 scarves for various women in my life. Being able to do that makes me feel good and gives my self esteem a real boost!

My mother eventually became blind but she never stopped doing needle work. She continued to knit, mostly simple projects, until she died.

My vision has been failing lately and the wonderful thing is that a lot of the time I also can work on simple projects in spite of the poor eyesight.

I can’t say that crochet has changed my life the way it did my brother’s. I can only say that it has always been a very important part of my life and who I am.

http://cache.lionbrand.com/cgi-bin/lionbrand/displayCustomerProjects.fcgi?projectKey=33284&displayType=story

[knitter4democracy]

1. Needlework was used for WWI shellshock therapy.

A lot of the guys knit socks and other items for refugees and other vets after they came home for, what they called then, shellshock, or PTSD. It was considered a solid therapy.

[eleny]

2. That's an amazing story

I can understand since crocheting has a soothing rhythm. I suppose it has something in common with meditation.

[ananda]

3. That's so interesting.

I've been crocheting quite a bit this year, making things for family
and friends and even myself. I like seeing an end product that
can be so useful and sometimes aesthetic.

Also, I've found a lot of free patterns on the internet... and they
mostly work fine. Can't beat that with a stick and a nail in your
foot. ;-))

Sue

[Morgana LaFey]

4. SOMETIMES aesthetic?

I can guarantee you, ananda, you are underestimating your results. Of COURSE they're aesthetic!!! They're handcrafted, lovingly made by YOU. :D

I love the free patterns too. Right now I'm enchanted with this one, for the 2-1/2 year old toddler who is my step-grandson:

http://cache.lionbrand.com/patterns/50855.html

Isn't that adorable?

and I just finished this (except the seaming, which I'm sitting here reading this forum instead of DOING 'cause I hate finishing):

http://www.lionbrand.com/cgi-bin/patternFinder.fcgi?craft=Knit&search=Search&searchText=eco-friendly+expandable+shopping+bag&search=Search


I knit it in plain ole white Lion Cotton, having screwed up the color thing by not paying enough attention to the instructions. But I'm going to take some novelty yarn -- Paton's CiCi, which is a red/yellow/blue yarn with little puffs of color -- and weave it at least once around just under the top edge. It's going to be adorable. And THEN I'm going to start another one using Lion Cotton, this time in TWO colors. I was so tickled with this project I stopped at WalMart this morning and bought some Peaches 'n' Cream to do yet another one!

I'm also planning to do some more (tho might try a crochet version, the pattern for which I've got somewhere) using the cotton yarn from two of DH's old sweaters I'm recycling. I'm especially delighted about this because I pulled them out of the Goodwill bag and started ripping them apart BEFORE I remembered: I hate 100% cotton in clothing. So this is a great project to use that yarn. I might even play with dying it in some different colors, for fun. (Koolaid only works for animal fibers, I've heard, so it'll have to be Rit or something. That's fine.)

And by the time I'm finished with all these, perhaps I will have lost enough weight it's feasible to knit clothing for myself again. Currently, it takes too much yarn and too much time. But I'm on my way to a thinner me, so cross your fingers for me.