Originally posted to @thenewartgallerywalsall Instagram page
Two significant things happened in 2021, in the period after losing my dad. This is the second...
As we approached the summer, my good friend @sarahzacharek taught me to crochet. Just one pattern - a simple granny square. This one pattern was all I could do but, unusually for me, this was a learning curve that my brain didn't immediately drop once realising I wouldn't be an instant prodigy. Instead, I relished the practise of it.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
In the day, my hands twiddled with the hook and the yarn beneath my laptop camera as I logged into work meetings, and in the evenings, as my peripheral vision binged Grey's Anatomy, my hands were still occupied. Later it would follow me to bed, where I'd lay with the lights dimmed "just finishing this last row", remembering that I hadn't put a wash on or emptied the dishwasher.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
I started collecting different types of yarn, just as enamoured with the yarn and the colours themselves, than with any 'made' piece.
I hadn't learnt yet how to join the individual granny squares together, but it didn't matter. My pile of granny squares grew taller, and with it a sense of ambition to keep it going.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
My hands being busy meant that my head wasn't. As if the muscle memory stole just enough attention from the brain for its thoughts to stop circling, escalating, deafening.
Loop, twist, hook, pull.
All the while, I was also spending time examining my dad's photographs - saving the scans to my phone, unpicking the details, observing the colour palettes.
It took me a long time to realise, but I began to wonder whether my crochet fixation was perhaps me responding to my grief and my dad's photographs in a physical way. Whether the two events perhaps weren't the disparate things I'd assumed, but actually two actions in direct dialogue with one another. Two compulsions, each feeding and encouraging the other.