Taking up the needles again,

[versailles_rose]

When my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, I knitted her chemo caps. I'd send her two caps a month. Deb was ill for nearly two years when she passed a year ago last May.

Since she died, I didn't feel like knitting. I'd say that knitting so much wrecked my hands and gave me Carpal Tunnel. (It's not a lie, I really did.) Just recently I've started knitting again. I'm practicing colorwork, and design. This evening I cast on a hat to knit in blue and white. It is the first time I've knit anything in over a year.

I guess my period of mourning is over, and I can enjoy knitting again without feeling the loss and sadness.

Anyone else go through something like this?

Comments

[curiosity]

I made a giant blanket for my mom. It was six feet by six feet. And once I finished it and sent it off, I didn't do anything for over a year. We have such a rocky relationship and I don't really want to be closer to her. Just at peace with her choices. So that was tough.

We put a lot of emotion into our work sometimes. It can be really draining, huh?

Welcome back to the club.

[linaelyn]

I've been through this, not with knitting but with cooking. Cooking with creativity was something my Gran-gran taught me, with joy and laughter mixed in the process. Cooking with some flair was something I could give my Gran-gran, after her mind wandered and she didn't know who all of us were. For me, cooking became a rote task that was merely necessary calorie-production, for a while after we lost Gran-gran. It took about 2 years for me to come back to my love of creative cooking.

Grieving is hard work, and there's no right way or wrong way to go about it. A year is totally in the realm of normal, for avoiding an activity that has associations -- strong or weak or utterly inexplicable associations -- that bring discomfort. Time does heal things, quite often.

[yanagi_wa]

My DIL is ill right now and I've done about the same thing. I have to take a week off and see if the pain fades. If not, I have to wear those ugly gloves for another week. *sigh* If it rains, it pours.