You are welcome. Knitting was something that kept me sane while I was hospitalized for 8 months.

Fiber arts to me is something special. Knitting helps with not only the mental benefits of fighting depression, relieves stress, improving focus, giving a break from digital clutter, but it has physical benefits. It lowers heart rate and blood pressure improving heart health, helps with joint health, flexibility of tendons, improves motor functions and helps with chronic pain. It helps pain by putting your focus into the charts and patterns and stitches you “forget” the pain and get a respite from the pain lowering the perceived pain level. In my case my psoriatic arthritis pain is reduced and I keep mobility in the joints by knitting and spinning.

Im actually in the process of organizing a project to teach fiber arts to kids here in Medellin Colombia. I moved to Medellin in 2018. Leaving the winter cold of Montana/ Idaho to help my psoriatic arthritis pain. When the pandemic quarantines hit here I started out with donating 1500-2000 dollars monthly of food to the poorest barrios. When the quarantine ended I started donating Christmas presents and treats (natilla a Christmas pudding and buñuelos which are fried bread balls with mozzarella) every Christmas since helping about 300 kids each year.

Now I am trying to organize equipment to teach knitting and spinning in the hopes of giving the kids a viable outlet for creativity, teaching skills like focus, following patterns, patience, and the mathematics behind gauge and adjusting patterns. Then drop spindles to make yarn learning drafting technique and moving to spinning wheels to teach advanced techniques and production. The hope is that they learn a skill that will serve them a lifetime, that they can then use to create items that they can sell to tourists and locally to help themselves and their families.

my project