Why I Knit

Dr Hannah Barham-Brown is a GP and lecturer living in rural Scotland. Hannah speaks about learning to knit during lockdown around the same time she was diagnosed with ADHD, and found that this was something productive she could do with her hands.

Hannah speaks about bringing knitting to board meetings and as a lecturer, and advocates for this as a reasonable adjustment to help with focus. She talks about using knitting to access ‘active rest’ which has been particularly important during recovery from burnout, and how wearing handknits has helped her to avoid the small-talk that she hates!

Find out more about Hannah on Instagram, TikTok and Threads

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

Knitting coach Nessa Hubbard joins me to discuss her own journey with knitting and crochet, going from being taught to knit as a very young child to help her to sit still to teaching other people to knit and crochet, and helping them to boost their skills and crucially also their confidence.

As someone with ADHD, Nessa speaks about feeling that knitting helps to hold her brain in a way that nothing else does and allows her to access immediate calm She also speaks about the sense of community that she has found through knitting.

To find out more about Nessa visit her website nessahubbard.com

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

Tommy gurumi on instagram

This week on the podcast I am delighted to be joined by Thomas, who is known online as Tommygurumi. Thomas talks about learning to knit accidentally on a long car journey to impress someone, and then finding his own particular love for creating knitted models of characters. Probably unlike most knitters, Thomas usually knits things that don’t have an existing pattern, which means that he has to do a lot of trial and error and figuring things out himself, which is a big part of the process that he enjoys.

It was a pleasure to hear Thomas’s enthusiasm for knitting and to hear how it allows him to access both a sense of calm for a busy mind as well as recreating a type of wonder and joy that he remembers from childhood.

I really hope you enjoy this episode.

Find out more about Thomas on Instagram or TikTok

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

Salina Jane is an artist and knitter who brilliantly captures the feelings many of us have about our knitting in her art work. It was a pleasure to speak to Salina about her experience of using knitting throughout her recovery from a recent period of illness, and how she uses both knitting and visual art to tell human stories.

You can find out all about Salina's work at her website Salina Jane Art or on Instagram or Ravelry.

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

Join our community on Patreon!

We'd love you to join us on Patreon - you can support the podcast while accessing perks such as early access to new episodes, our weekly behind the scenes videos and join our monthly online knitting circle.

This week I am delighted to be joined by yarn dyer and yarn shop owner Kitey, who is also known as The Yarn Whisperer. Kitey speaks about his journey from crochet to knitting, and how dying yarn unexpectedly brought together lots of different parts of his heritage.

He also reflects on the importance of keeping some craft projects for himself as someone who works in the yarn industry, and the creative collaboration that happens when we combine yarns with a pattern and then add our own interpretation of it.

To find out more about his yarns and shop visit The Yarn Whisperer or follow him on Instagram

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

Series 10 returns for a series of interviews exploring why we knit and how knitting benefits our mental health. This week I am joined by Lydia who is the Co-founder of Weku Yarn which she runs alongside her sister Hannah. You may also know Lydia as one of the finalists from the first series of Game of Wool.

Lydia joins me to speak about how she learned to knit, how her relationship with knitting has changed and evolved over recent years, including the times that high levels of stress has meant that she didn’t feel able to pick up her knitting needles.

It was a pleasure to hear Lydia’s journey from knitting for pleasure into a business, and then her reflections on her time as a contestant on Game of Wool.

You can find out more about Lydia’s yarn at @wekuyarn on Instagram or at her website

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

Join our community on Patreon!

We'd love you to join us on Patreon - you can support the podcast while accessing perks such as early access to new episodes, our weekly behind the scenes videos and join our monthly online knitting circle.

Series 10 is on the way, and with it a new and exciting development! We have created a Patreon Community and we'd love you to join us there - the perks for supporting the podcast will include early access to episodes, our behind the scenes weekly videos and you can join us at our monthly online knitting circle.

We are really looking forward to growing the community element of Creative Restoration so we really hope to see you there. Find out more here: Join the Community

Series 10 of the podcast will return on Thursday 10th September with a series of 7 new interviews. We can't wait to share them with you.

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

In this Journal Club episode Dr Paula Redmond joins me to discuss a journal article about using knitting in a center for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. This is a narrative of a knitting group within a rehab center for women living with addiction.

The paper is here:

Duffy, K. (2007). Knitting through recovery one stitch at a time: Knitting as an experiential teaching method for affect management in group therapy. Journal of Groups in Addiction & Recovery, 2(1), 67–83. https://doi.org/10.1300/J384v02n01_04 [1, 2]

Unfortunately the full text is not available for free, but anyone in the UK can access it via a local library.

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

This week Dr Paula Redmond joins me to discuss how knitting can help with depression and low mood. We've chosen three episodes of the podcast in which my guests have discussed using knitting as a strategy to help with low mood, and we discuss our reflections and themes from these conversations.

The episodes we listened to were:

Series 4 episode 1 with Ellen of Sew and Inspire

Series 1 episode 3 with James McIntosh

Series 5 episode 6 with Kathryn Vercillo

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration

This week Paula and I discuss the journal article investigating whether knitting can reduce anxious thoughts in people diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

Find the article here: Clave-Brule, M & Mazloum, A & Park, Rebecca & Harbottle, E. (2009). Managing anxiety in eating disorders with knitting. Eating and weight disorders : EWD. 14. e1-5. 10.1007/BF03354620.

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our first Knitting Circle on 21st October at 7pm

We'd love you to join us at our first online Knitting Circle event - find out more at Patreon.com/Creative_Restoration