But these items were often very expensive, so I started to make the things that I had wanted to buy. I saw a ’70s vest online that I really enjoyed and I remember taking a picture of that and putting it in my pictures folder. And then I looked up “’70s vest tutorial” on YouTube. So I used a pattern that I found on YouTube but I used the colors that I was inspired by from the vest that I saw online.

Crochet is the best stress reliever. You know that you are creating something, but I think that it comes without the pain that a lot of other creative labors have. You’re sticking to a limited number of patterns and you’re just replicating these motions over and over where it’s really calming. And because you’re following set patterns, there isn’t a lot of room for error, so you’re constantly working on something without stress.

So something that I’ve been doing is I’ll crochet during meetings. I tutor after school online and I’ll have that going while I’m conducting the session. Sometimes I’ll do it when I come home, like, if there are some gaps in my schedule where I have a little bit of time, I’ll try to crochet then.

The longest thing that I’ve made, it’s probably the blanket I’m working on right now. I have this crocheted blanket that I bought that covers my bed, but it’s relatively small. So I decided, okay, I want to make my own full-length crocheted blanket. It’s probably going to be like 80 hours to complete. I think right now my attention is so focused on that blanket. I just, I wanna finish that blanket!