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