Crocheting The Stress Away… What crocheting has done for me and my physical and mental health (Part 2)

Hello All,

Welcome back and if this is your first time here…Hello! Last week on my blog I touched on why I crochet and how it’s helped me handle the stresses of everyday life. Well, I can tell you that my stress levels and patience for people were at death con 5 last week. I was stressed out because of things happening at work and stressed out because I wanted to go and do things, but I had responsibilities to start/finish orders (which is a blessing that I have them). I’m not going to lie, the last thing I wanted to do was make something. I just wanted to either sleep, eat junk food or binge watch Netflix and YouTube. I know that when I’m in that frame of mind I need to pick up my hook and some yarn and just make something to get me out of my head and out of my funk.

I started on 1 project that needs to be ready by the end of the month and tried to finish another project that I unfortunately threw the keys pieces to finishing the project away. So that added to my stress level as well. Oh and I also couldn’t/still can’t find my tunisian crochet hooks( if you follow me on Instagram you would’ve seen my posts). To be honest… at first I really wasn’t into it but after I calmed myself down and focused on what I was doing and all of my stress melted away– for the most part. I try not to let myself get stressed to the point where I just can’t deal with anything and I was almost there last week.

It reminded me of how I felt a few years ago when I pretty much blew my knee completely out. I had 2 incident’s back to back that made it almost impossible to walk without severe pain which resulted in me narrowly escaping ACL surgery and instead having to do 12+ weeks worth of rehab and I still wasn’t 100% afterwards. The stress of having to depend on others when you’re used to being very independent was just not it for me. So I relied heavily on crochet and a little bit of crafting to get me out of my funk and it absolutely did.

So let’s dive in shall we? 

 After my physical therapy was over, my orthopedic surgeon told me that I still couldn’t do my favorite form of exercise which was Pilates and I could only do limited Yoga. So I had to figure out how I was I going to get my knee back into shape. So I came up with…drum roll please… Walking to the yarn shop!! Lol… it may seem silly but that was my motivation. Knowing that I was going to go yarn shopping motivated me to not only come up with new projects to do, it also really helped me mentally push through to recovering my knee fully. I would walk to the yarn shop 3 times a week and I didn’t live far, but I didn’t live close either. Now sitting here thinking about it, it was probably about a mile there and a mile back to my home. It wasn’t the worst, but I can tell you it wasn’t the best either. My knee would ache so badly afterwards because before the rehab I only a -19 degrees of flexion in my knee . After rehab I still didn’t have my full range of motion back so that was the goal I was working towards and also walking without that twinge of pain deep down in my knee as well. When I would get home I would ice it and pick up my crochet hook and yarn and crochet to take my mind off of the pain I was in.

Now 2 years later, I’m grateful for that experience—pain and all. It helped me realize that no matter what– I can make it through anything. One thing that I can’t get used to though is knowing when it’s going to rain or any kind of precipitation outside…lol

Until next week,

💚💚Tacia