"Knitting is the saving of life"

Virginia Woolf reportedly told her about to be husband Leonard Woolf. That must have been in around 1912. She used knitting as a form of therapy until even that did not help and she took her own life in 1941. There is a picture, painted by her sister Vanessa, of her knitting in that same year. You can't really see Virginia clearly. She had an intense dislike of being drawn or having her photograph taken and her sister seems to acknowledge this. 

 

 

Here's the picture painted by Vanessa. She shows Virginia from something more than a profile but not a direct portrait. She is slumped back in the chair as if relaxed. Perhaps she was - although very little of her internal life appears to have been that way.

I had to go looking for the picture. Our local federal MP had sent out a questionnaire/survey asking for feedback about a range of issues. There was space for any additional issues we were concerned about. If my MP, whom I actually happen to like, is silly enough to give me such an opportunity then she is going to get an answer. I attached a sheet with a single paragraph making a case for more emphasis on the mental health benefits of such crafts and the need to support them. 

Will my MP take any notice? She might. Will she be able to do anything about it? Perhaps. I am not hopeful because there are so many other demands made of our MPs but I only have myself to blame if I don't try. It is surely better to spend say a tenth of the money for mental health on activities which involve people meeting and working together in groups. It is surely better to have people in a gardening group, a chess or board games group, a knitting or crochet group, a woodwork or metalwork group, a spinning and weaving group, a lace making group, an origami and other paper craft group than in a therapy group. I have no doubt that such groups can provide intellectual stimulation and social support - those things often lacking in the lives of people who feel isolated.

Of course it won't work for everyone but I do believe that such groups can provide support. There was someone who came  to a knitting group I  belonged to before Covid caused it to cease. She admitted to me, "This group literally saved my life." Yes, she had been seriously contemplating suicide before she came. She no longer lives here but I heard recently that she has set up a craft group in the small rural community to which she has moved. 

Knitting is not "just knitting". It brings people together too - knits them together if you like. Others crafts and activities also bring people together. Unlike sport these are often activities that can be pursued at other times and in other places, sometimes alone and sometimes together and for years after active involvement in sport has ceased. 

I went to see the Senior Cat yesterday. I will go again tomorrow. If he is not involved in some other activity he will be puzzling over a paper puzzle or origami of some sort. On the way home I called in to another residential care unit to help someone with a knitting pattern. She is a "young" 94 and she is trying something new - a pattern written in the Japanese style.

    "It's a challenge dear but I am so enjoying it."

The staff there love her enthusiasm - and she is teaching two of them to knit. They are delightful but homesick young Asian girls. Learning to knit is helping them cope with Covid19 and is saving more than one life.