crocheting for a stroke victim

[justplaincharlotte]

Antares,

I'll be checking back every so often as the new job has me up to my eyeballs in alligators. Not a bad thing, just eating away into my knitting and KH time. I'll be PM'ing Pepsi99 in a few days.

One of the hardest things to realize about the therapy issue post stroke is that it focuses solely on necessary life skills like walking, talking, and shirt buttoning.

To us yarnies, knitting and crochet are life skills, but not so much to the OT involved. Not to put too fine a point on it, but wiping your own fanny is more important to reentry into the world than quality of life skills like knitting or crocheting. And frankly, that focus on the necessary is what kills the spirit of too many of us with neurological deficits. It almost killed mine, even as persistent as I am.

I just hope the OP's friend can gain some hope and adapt anything in the video to her own situation. And I'm more than willing to establish contact with her directly for support and troubleshooting, as someone who has some idea of what she's facing. A stroke is physically and psychologically debilitating enough without the added loss of a skill one loved enough to take years to master. It would be my pleasure to help however I can.

[DogCatMom]

Agreed. When I had to give up crochet for 15 (!) years--it was either that or give up working as a word processor/technical editor--almost no one understood that the crochet had been a stress reliever, a pretty essential "life skill" in itself.

I eventually replaced it with quilting, which can be done these days via rotary cutting, machine piecing, and long-arm quilting (sometime$ sent out to a professional long-arm quilter), with almost no handwork needed.

But when I was able to venture back into the World of Yarn in January 2008, it was like meeting a long-lost love again. And just in time....I didn't know it, but the next four years were going to be absolutely dreadful, and *quiet* non-machine-type handwork has been essential.

DogCatMom

[justplaincharlotte]

I know what you mean DCM!

[pepsi99]

Thank you so much Charlotte! You're doing great! Unfortunately my friend can't move her arem or fingers that much. They are pretty much immobile so she really is doing this one handed. I'm sure there's a way she could 'thread' the wool so that her left hand could sort of hold it but she can't pinch it in any way. She told me she was going to give all her crochet hooks and wool away and I told her never to give up....not to do that yet....so we'll keep working on it and eventually I know we'll come up with something that will work!

[justplaincharlotte]

Pepsi99,

I'm so sorry to hear your friends mobility is so limited, and that she can't use that way of crocheting as something of a workaround. Like you I'd hate for her to give away her hooks and wool if she doesn't have to.


I'm sending you a PM asking some rather direct questions about the mobility in your friends fingers, hand, wrist, and arm so that I may be able to limit my own mobility to hers as far as I can to try to figure out a method that might work. You don't have to answer them, but that's my only way of tailoring to her as far as I can. I hope you do, because I really want to help if I can.

Please give her my best!

[Becky Morgan]

Two thoughts...
1. If she can pick up her immobile hand and lay it on the yarn as well as on the work, that can give her some control over the tension. I don't normally wind my yarn around any fingers, either when I knit or crochet, so I know it could work.
2. If and when she gets back a small amount of mobility, a hair scrunchie around her palm with the yarn run through it might give her enough "grip" to make it easier.

It's possible to knit "shepherdess" style with a long needle held under one arm, handling the yarn and work entirely with the other hand. Something tells me it should be possible to do Tunisian that way, too, or possibly to use a long Tunisian hook under the nonworking arm (using it as weight only) and maneuver at least small things with the working hand.

Where there's yarn there's a way!

[pepsi99]

thank you so much everyone! I'm going to read to her your responses and see if we can work something out.