Crochet Started as Therapy

Crochet Started as Therapy

Before there were pickles, aliens, permits, archive records, and curious specimens, there was just yarn.

Crochet started as therapy.

Not the formal kind—the keeping-my-hands-busy, quieting-my-brain, getting-through-one-more-day kind.

The timing wasn’t a coincidence.

A few years ago, life seemed determined to unravel all at once. I was working as a seamstress at a uniform company, trying to keep my head above water while navigating lifelong anxiety and mental health struggles. Then came a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis that completely changed my life. Coma. A heart attack. Hospital rooms. ICU. Fear.

The realization that life was not nearly as predictable as I had always hoped it would be.

I survived, but surviving and recovering are not always the same thing.

When the world shut down during COVID, I found myself carrying a lot of things I didn’t know how to put down. Anxiety. Uncertainty. Exhaustion. The quiet grief that comes from realizing your life has changed in ways you never planned for.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I picked up a crochet hook.

At first, it was just something to do with my hands. Something to focus on besides my thoughts. Something predictable. One stitch follows another.

Count to eight.

Count to sixteen.

Count to twenty-four.

Miss a stitch? Go back and fix it.

The yarn didn’t care whether I was anxious. It didn’t care if I was overwhelmed. It didn’t care if I had a good day or a bad day. It just waited patiently for the next stitch.

For the first time in a long time, I had something that made the noise in my head a little quieter.

What surprised me was what happened next.

I kept crocheting.

And crocheting.

And crocheting.

The projects started piling up. Then the piles started having piles. I had blankets. I had pillows. I had more blankets. I had yarn occupying every available surface. At some point I became genuinely concerned that I was going to die beneath an avalanche of yarn and poorly supervised stuffed creatures.

Then I heard about a monthly makers market.

So I applied.

To my surprise, they said yes.

The first market was a disaster.

At least, that’s how it felt.

I was overwhelmed before I had even finished setting up. Everyone else looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. Their booths were polished. Their displays were beautiful. They looked like real businesses. I felt like an imposter who had wandered into the wrong place carrying an army of flying pigs. I spent most of the day convinced nobody would buy anything. Convinced I didn’t belong there. Convinced everyone else had received instructions that I somehow missed.

But something interesting happened.

People stopped.

Not because my booth looked professional. Not because my prices were perfect. Not because I had some brilliant marketing strategy. They stopped because they were curious. They laughed. They picked things up. They asked questions. They told stories. And by the end of the day, I realized something important.

If I was going to do this, I couldn’t compete by trying to be like everyone else.

I wasn’t going to have the prettiest booth. I wasn’t going to have the trendiest products. I wasn’t going to build a brand around being polished. I needed to lean into the thing that made me different.

That’s when the strange and unusual started happening. The highland cows in drag. The aliens. The loaf cats. The Loch Ness monsters. The monsters who were just monsters.

The creatures started acquiring names.

Then personalities.

Then stories.

Then permits.

Then specimen numbers.

Then entire departments dedicated to the regulation of cryptids that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The Emotional Support Pickle appeared.

Pocket aliens arrived.

The Wandering Archive emerged.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped making products and started building a world. And the funny thing is, the more specific and strange it became, the more people connected with it. Maybe because everyone is carrying something. Maybe because comfort doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. Or maybe because deep down, a surprising number of adults secretly want official documentation for their emotional support pickle.

Whatever the reason, the weird little creatures kept finding their people.

And I kept finding mine.

The years that followed brought new challenges, new diagnoses, and more questions than answers. There were autoimmune issues - buy one, get three free - Chronic pain. Fatigue. More specialists than I can comfortably keep track of. Eventually there was an autism diagnosis that explained far more about my life than I ever expected it would.

Some things became harder.

Some things finally started making sense.

Through all of it, the Archive kept growing.

The creatures became more elaborate. The stories became stranger. The world became bigger.

What began as a way to quiet my brain slowly evolved into a way to understand it.

Today, sew·cu·te·rie exists somewhere between an art project, a coping mechanism, a small business, and an ongoing exercise in asking, "What if we made this a little weirder?"

The answer is usually yes.

These days you'll find the Archive online, at makers markets, and occasionally spilling out of a horse trailer known as the Chaos Caravan. New specimens continue to arrive with alarming regularity, permits are issued whenever possible, and the cryptid population remains largely unregulated.

I still crochet for many of the same reasons I did in the beginning. The difference is that now I know I'm not the only one looking for comfort in small things.

At its heart, sew·cu·te·rie is still what it has always been. A collection of small comforts made by someone who needed them, too.

For the anxious.

For the overwhelmed.

For the chronically ill.

For the exhausted caregivers.

For the overthinkers.

For the people carrying more than anyone realizes.

For anyone who has ever needed an emotional support pickle.

This work exists because I do.

Presence is sufficient cause.