Healing In The Mess

Choosing to heal.

Back in April, I needed to repair a pair of jeans that I had made a couple of years ago as I had walked through them. To be totally honest, they are not the best thing I have ever sewn together; a back panel wasn’t cut on the grain and looks a bit funky, and the zipper… just don’t look at the inside as it’s a crazy mess. But I love these jeans. They are as soft as butter, faded to the lightest blue, and the back pockets are fraying. What these jeans have taught me is that healing is messy; we heal in the mess. The patches that we choose to cover our scars with can be beautiful, but we are the ones that can choose how we mend them. 

The life cycle of my jeans has been an interesting one to go through. Firstly, I made them. I cut them out and made a few mistakes (they were only my second pair of handmade jeans), and there have been times when I have had to wash them more than I would normally like due to heavy gardening on random Sundays with friends, or spilling coffee on them and looking like a goofball in the local cafe. For years I turned the cuffs up twice so sand would collect in them every time I went to the beach, until two weeks ago I just cut them to a length which is now (to be honest), an inch too short. They have travelled with me, and they have been a spring and summer staple in the wardrobe since they were sewn together. 

Mending my clothes is something that reminds me of my psychotherapy sessions, which I hasten to add is a very good feeling. My weekly sessions with Jo were a dedicated hour in the week where I could stop, pick up my life, and take a good look at the rips and tears that needed attending to. I could analyse how the cloth of my life got beaten up. Some parts needed to be cut out and discarded, and there were other portions that I could take time to mend. I could choose new threads, pretty buttons, a better zipper, or a higher quality of material to patch and mend my life. 

Choosing The Seams

Choosing the seams.

When I started working on my own healing I walked into Jo’s ‘Head Shed’ (her garden therapy room), not knowing anything much about myself. I knew I loved Finchley and my brothers, and that they were my solid foundation - I could trust them and they never hurt me or let me down. The rest of life looked like a world obliterated through napalm followed by a fair few atom bombs. Over the years I learned that healing was not a ‘To-Do’ list that I had to tick off in order to achieve a state of ‘Fixe’, for me it was a process of self discovery and a place where I could let go - to cut out - the parts of my life - my cloth - that was damaged beyond a point I chose. I could then choose which seams I wanted to use to stitch the life around it. 

Hand sewn Feld and French seams were chosen for their strength and depth for the parts of my life where I really wanted to dig into after the proverbial scissors had done their work. Whip stitches tacked around edges that needed to be stabilized with friendships, and an overlocker was brought out for a quick fix that would get everything together without an argument.

The re-connecting of ragged cloth gave me a canvas, and I realised that I didn’t like the colour of it. It had become as washed out grey; there was no excitement, and it still didn’t offer me a hint of what I wanted to move into. It was repaired, but with Jo’s guidance, I needed to work out how I wanted it to fit me. The whole of me. My mind, body, soul and heart. 

Adding Colour

Adding the colour

Colour was the surprising part of my therapy sessions, and I started to see it come out in my wardrobe as we travelled through my metaphorical and physical spaces. I started turning away from the feeling of control that had been placed on my fashion choices through my mum, who had made sure my colour analysis had been done when I was around 12 years old, and had used it to box in my style ever since. At the age of 40 I was finally able to admit that I hate the colour of oatmeal and I wanted to wear purple.

Silver sages and seafoam greens started to appear, and I began to love the gentle pinks and blues that I could see reflected in the natural world around me as I started to plan my move to the coast, and away from the greyness of the commuter belt. I noticed that the patterns I was creating with my knitting became more adventurous, with cables travelling through my sweaters, and colour-work became my go-to so that I could experiment in mixing patterns and colours, rather than wearing clothes in square blocks. 

It came full circle last autumn when I decided to work in earth tones for a season. It was a wrench, and there were some that made my body feel anxious (it turns out that sludge green and oatmeal are dead and gone forever in my life, and that’s absolutely ok!). My healing palette was brighter greens, ochre, and burnt reds, but I have come to realise that I only need a couple of these in my wardrobe for the depths of winter, rather than carrying them with me as a self-styled brand imposed on me as a child. 

Patching The Holes

Darning my walking socks

There isn’t a hole in my ‘life-cloth’ that I am needing to cut out any more. There may be ones that come along in the future, but my life is more about patching and darning now, which is a comfortable place to be. As I was revisiting the patching of my jeans for the second time in the same place this week, I realised that the patches I had used the first time around had been too dainty. They only just covered the holes on the inside seams of the jeans; they had actually required full-on zig zag stitches, visible running stitches, and a patch that covered them a good inch further in all directions.

For the mend, I chose a soft chambray for the patches for the simple reason that the denim is now so soft and worn that a heavy duty 12oz patch would be ridiculous. It is a bit like choosing the right thread to darn my socks; silk for my bed-socks is perfect, whereas a full on woollen spun yarn for my hiking socks will get me to the top of the Cornish hills this autumn. The colours don’t have to match either, as a cream v-neck sweater can be enhanced by a glaring pop of colour on an elbow. But whatever material is chosen for the mending, the patch has to cover a much broader area than the injury and sewn in securely with anchor stitches and strong weaves. 

You can’t half-ass healing.

To mend my jeans the second time,I got the whole arsenal out; the iron, sewing machine, and all-the-things from my sewing corner. There was no half-assing this time around. I cut the stringy threads and patched it thoroughly on both sides. 

Mending, choosing to heal, they are choices. It’s true, I could just make another pair of jeans, and believe me, I will! But the time it takes to heal the ones I already have is a representation of the time I dedicated to healing myself to this point. There will be times when I get worn down and need to spend more time in Jo’s ‘head-shed’, but I would rather do that than just grab the nearest, shiniest, newest fashion that is filling me with dopamine hits. 

Patching is deeply un-sexy, and it’s counter cultural in our fast-fashion driven world. I would argue that working on ourselves is similar, and you know what, it’s also just really boring most of the time! Mending with a community around us is the healthiest way to heal, and that is why I love the groups that I sew and knit with, it’s the gentlest form of therapy I can think of; small groups of people just hanging out and talking trash most of the time whilst we stitch our clothes and our lives together. 

Darned holes on a cream sweater

A pile of scrap fabric in denim and cotton

a darning loom

“We have to go in there, Mr Frodo, there’s nothing for it. Let’s just make it down the hill for starters”.

Samwise Gamgee ‘Return Of The King’ (Film)

The Analogue Knitter, And The Dopamine Fast.

The Joy Of Going Analogue

“The Dopamine Fast” became a fad in Silicon Valley way back in the late 20-teens, after Californian Psychiatrist, Dr Cameron Sepah, created the catch phrase that highlighted our addiction to feel-better-quick-fixes. The concept has been misunderstood (you cannot fast from a natural brain chemical response), and the core tenet has been lost; that we should practice mindfulness regularly, get out in nature more, connect with people around us, and get off our freaking screens. But what (I hear you ask), has this got to do with knitting? Well, this week I was called ‘The Analogue Knitter’ by someone on Instagram, and it got me thinking. 

Back in 2022, Lenstore Hub published an article claiming that the average person in the UK scrolls the length of the Eiffel Tower each day, and in December 2024 The Guardian wrote about how doom-scrolling is shrinking our grey matter. In the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience (2022), a peer reviewed research paper linked screen time in the early years of brain development to early onset dementia. You get the point… screens aren’t great, and it is understandable that the idea of a “Digital Detox”, or “Dopamine Fast”, can sound very appealing, especially when it’s whipped up on Tick-Tock and the science is left to fester in the backwaters of academia. Why would we want to understand brain chemistry when the platforms we get our news from prefer us to have an attention span that is smaller than a goldfish (or is that also a myth?!).

A Creative Brian

Dopamine is often named ‘The Pleasure Hormone’, as we feel it when we get a jolt of pleasure from something; this reward loop keeps us doing something that makes us feel great. The irony of this hormone based neurotransmitter is that it can increase both when we use our phones too much, or meditate. 

There is little doubt that integrating mindfulness into our day-to-day activities is a better use of dopamine than wearing out our thumb pads as we scroll on our phones, and it won’t rot our brains as it increases grey matter instead of diminishing it. All of this is why, as a knitter, I have chosen to step away from screens when I knit. 

I have turned off all the notifications, and my ring tone is on silent, to the point where my brothers joke that lighting the beacons of Gondor would get my attention quicker than a WhatsApp message. But I am human and live with a phone, and so I know all too well how easy it is for me to pick up my device and swipe my way through an hour of my life; that block of plastic and rare earth minerals is just too tempting. However, my knitting makes me feel better. 

I am an analogue knitter and proud of it! I do not use Ravelry, Knit Companion, or a row tracker app. I purchase patterns through the designers' websites that I follow on Instagram, or I ask my local yarn shops to email the patterns if they are only on Ravelry (which supports our LYSs in the process), and I print them off, meaning I follow paper patterns. The reasons I do this are personal to me, but I hope that they spark some food for thought for you too. 

Less Screens, More Brain.

Our hands and minds are connected.

There are two fantastic bi-products of getting creative (away from a screen) on a regular basis; you calm down whilst your brain thickens up! 

Grey matter in your frontal cortex is stimulated when you create, and it has been shown that when you do it regularly that area of the brain ‘thickens’ (a bit like growing muscles getting stronger). The same is true for the hippocampus part of your brain, where memory and learning happen. These areas love knitting, especially when we challenge ourselves with new techniques, patterns, maths, problems to solve, and colour! It’s like a mental gym session as our brains love working things out and succeeding, which gives us the dopamine hit that keeps us coming back for more. (It’s pretty cool, really!)

Knitting also helps us calm down and feel better when we are feeling low (apart from when we are doing Italian bind-offs or frogging a whole sweater). Our breathing and heart rate drop to a steady, calm state, and the rhythmic, repetitive movement allows us to mindfully become present so that we can tune into a less chaotic thought process, with many saying that it helps to lift them out of depression.

For me, myself, and I, the idea that my brain can come to a quiet spot whilst I listen to gentle music of an audiobook whilst I knit is a wonderful way to spend my evenings. My stress is reduced, I am able to let my brain work away at things I need to process, and there is very little I need to worry about whilst I am enjoying my time with Finchley next to me on the sofa. The fact I get a thicker brain (in the best possible way!!) is a total bonus. 

People Power.

Cozy knitting at the pub with friends.

I love Instagram! It is the only social media I have, and it’s where I meet wonderful gentlefolk of the knitting community, see fresh inspiration, and generally have a grand old time sending anti-Trump and hobbit videos to my mates. However, you will never hear me say that it is better to be on the app than knitting with people. 

I knit with friends three or four times a week here in Falmouth; either at the pub with non-knitters, at the bookshop café with other makers, or at my regular knit-group on a Tuesday. (Last night, I even took my knitting to a sewing group I go to so that I could finish a sleeve!) Building a community through, and with, my knitting is the most precious part of my life. Indeed, The Knitted Wardrobe has changed my life, enabling me to step away from a career that was killing me slowly through diagnosed burn-out. 

Knitting will build your circle of friends and help combat the sense of loneliness that is becoming an epidemic in the western world. The connection with people in your local area is the healthiest part of being human; we need each other.

Peace On Paper

Books will always be part of my life.

For me, the whole point of knitting is to gain a sense of peace. Peace is hard fought for, and is taken easily, and my screens are the silent attackers. 

Reading is another quirky way to get the results of brain thickening through dopamine hits. I read paper books, rather than screens that tell me what percentage of the way through I am, or notify me when I haven’t read in three days. My books just sit there waiting for my attention and my old ticket stubs act as pretty good visual markers of how far I have until I finish the book.

Writing… it’s the same. More paper, more peace, slower breathing, slower heart rate, higher dopamine hits, thicker brain. 

So why would I have a screen on when I am knitting? Of course I print my patterns out, tally my rows and doodle on the edges, and then fold them into my project bags to spill coffee on them later on at the bookshop. 

Ravelry gave me panic attacks. 

All-the-things on all-the-needles.

My relationship with Ravelry needs a bit of explaining, and it is not an overly dramatic statement to say that it gave me panic attacks. 

I first logged on to Ravelry around 2014, and at first I thought it was the best thing to ever happen to knitting! However, I realised after a few years that I’d purchase patterns that I would never knit, and  I felt pressure from all the groups as well as the never ending ques of projects and stash. There were days when I felt bad for not knitting because I had projects that were backing up, which was the antithesis of why I started knitting. I looked in my closet and realised that I had lost my own sense of style, as I was only looking at the popular patterns that came up on the first page and knitting them for my older blogs and Instagram pages. Over the years, I realised that Ravelry was slowly eroding my love for knitting, as I felt as if I was knitting just to keep up with everyone else, rather than knitting for the pleasure of it.

Eventually I came off Ravelry when I realised that it is designed to keep you on the site, and companies only create platforms like that to make more money. If something is free to use, you are the one that is being used.

My Dopamine Fix

It’s pretty obvious that I am a dopamine chaser, just not in the way the tech companies want me to experience it. I love getting some regular dopamine fixes through my knitting, and I get a nerdy kick out of the fact that my brain is getting ticker and juicier every time I do it! 

I am fascinated that the simple act of knitting without a screen, or a Ravelry account, made someone want to label me as an analogue knitter. 

I know what my brain likes; PEACE. That doesn’t make me any better than anyone else, it just means I know how I roll. Neither does it mean that I live a low dopamine lifestyle, it means that I have found a healthy, constantly high, dopamine lifestyle based on mindfulness, creativity, and human connection.

I would encourage you to go down the rabbit hole and read the science on how our brains work, how our bodies react to different stimuli, and what is actually healthy. Dopamine is healthy, we just need to get it in better ways than scrolling on apps that are built to make us more addicted than heroin addicts. 

Until next time, may your needles bring you joy and your frogging be rare. 

Love, Jenny x