Knitting in the News: Help for Dementia Patients and Knitting is Good for You

I love stories about how people use knitting to help others, and thankfully there are lots of ways that we can use our needles for good. The staff and patients of Southmead Hospital in the UK (as well as other volunteers) have been busy making “twiddlemuffs,” knit muffs that feature a variety of textures, buttons, knit flowers and little toys, which are used by dementia patients to keep their hands warm and busy.

It’s frustrating for patients who have been active (and maybe even crafters themselves) to not be able to see or concentrate long enough to do activities they used to enjoy, and these knit objects give them something to focus on, as well as tactile and mental stimulation.

The hospital had been the site of a knitting program, and joined forces with a local knitting group to provide after-work knitting times for staff and yarn for the project.

You can find a pattern on Ravelry if you want to get a closer look.

There have been untold numbers of stories about the health benefits of knitting, and the latest one making the rounds on the Internet comes from Yahoo! Makers and covers a study at Northern Arizona University looking at Textile Therapy, or how working with needles and yarn — or a needle and thread, for that matter — provides mental health benefits.

Clinical psychologist Ann Futterman-Collier studied 60 women with varying levels of stress and had them either write, craft or meditate and keep track of their mood during the activity. People who made something with their hands showed the greatest “mood repair” including decreased negative feelings and less inflammatory response in the face of stressors. Yet another reason to keep your needles close at all times!

[Photo from the Yate and Sodbury News.]

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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