Description
Using Crochet During Difficult Times is a 27-page illustrated guide for crocheters navigating fear, grief, financial pressure, and the particular weight of living through hard things.
Drawing on Kathryn Vercillo’s twenty years of research at the intersection of crochet and mental health, and adapted from her 2015 book Hook to Heal, this guide offers ten structured exercises, reflection questions, and practical tools organized around five types of difficulty: ambient fear and political uncertainty, financial stress and scarcity, climate grief, personal loss, and isolation.
Each section pairs the emotional reality of the experience with specific crochet practices, rooted in research from polyvagal theory, the neuroscience of hand-based making, and the documented health benefits of craft. The guide also includes a slow yarn section on crochet as a small act of environmental resistance, a Quick Tips reference page for immediate support, and a closing practice called Begin Again.
This is not a pattern book. It is a companion for the times when you reach for your hook because you need somewhere to put what you are feeling, and you want that somewhere to be well considered.
Suitable for individual use and for therapists, social workers, and facilitators working with craft-based wellness practices.
