Throughout history, humans have turned to craft in times of sorrow. But what is it that makes working with our hands such a force for healing?
One of my earliest memories is sitting on my gran’s knee, with two colourful plastic needles in my hands, learning to knit. I remember watching the agonisingly slow growth of a tiny square we were forming together until, suddenly, it became the size of a coaster, and I was allowed to give up. I’d been desperately impatient, but she had remained serene, calmly continuing to encourage me as though she was passing along the most important skill I could possibly acquire, which, as it turned out, she was.
Throughout history, people have turned to creativity in moments of grief. Victorian women hand-stitched brooches in their bereavement; Americans embroidered weeping willows in silk following the death of their inaugural President Washington; Missouri Pettway (1900–1981) of Gee’s Bend, made a pieced cotton quilt in mourning for her husband from his work clothes; and today nearly 50,000 panels compose the Aids Memorial Quilt, each handmade in memory of loved ones lost.
Though she had taught me to knit as a four-year-old, I would only really pick up a pair of knitting needles again after my gran had died, when I’d find myself using the leftover wool from her knitting basket to form a series of wobbly scarves. The wools were all different weights and the scarves dipped in and fattened out in a strange uneven journey towards my casting off. Yet the repetitive action of pulling each loop of wool through another seemed the only thing capable of momentarily distracting my mind from the raw edge of loss. I realised then, that she had in fact been passing along an invaluable gift, one of both survival and care, which would rescue me in the deepest periods of grief following her death, and later that of my grandad.
Craft can allow us to memorialise loved ones, but it can also provide a kind of comfort in times of grief. There is something in the act of making that can temporarily subdue life’s sorrows, helping to carry us from one moment to the next despite the weight we may be carrying.
Creativity, whether it takes the form of a homemade loaf, a poem, or a slowly growing piece of knitwear, is a healing force. Like meditation, it can decelerate the noise of daily life by inviting us to take a moment to focus on something small, something intimate.
The meditative quality of repetitive creative acts such as weaving, knitting, sewing, or dyeing lies in the fact that they require a certain level of focus. This focus keeps our minds anchored to the present task and can temporarily provide a distraction from whatever is troubling us.