A warm, fuzzy therapy

Ellen Rubin: When you feel the yarn in your hands, it’s warm, it’s fuzzy. It’s just a very tactile experience when you are manipulating the yarn, and it’s exciting to see what the next color might be. Doing the repetitive motions, there is a peace that comes over you after you have the initial learning curve, where you are just working and not really necessarily thinking about what you’re doing. It’s very meditative. It’s all encompassing, just a very happy place to be. 

My name is Ellen Rubin, I own a knitting and crochet store called Luv2Knit & More in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. And we have started a nonprofit called Therapeutic Crafters on Call.

I noticed how powerful knitting could be when my dear friend Cheryl, who had cancer – I taught her how to knit to help her through some of the stress associated with her cancer treatments and multiple surgeries. And she would tell me how much better she felt when she was knitting. Originally, I did toxicological research. I also had a background in microbiology, I worked with pathogenic E coli. So I decided to do a literature search, which is what any good scientist does. I used to love going to the library and doing research of that nature. So I started collecting a very large binder of articles that seemed relevant. I would really love to see more scientific studies be done about the benefits of knitting and crochet on a more fundamental level. It’s incredibly fascinating to me.

Prior to COVID, we had every single Thursday, we would have people come here, hang out knitting, crochet, set up table, we would have foods, we would just talk about life and get to know one another. First we were strangers. And then people became friends that cared for one another that were there during tough times. And it became its own wonderful community. Now with COVID we’re doing it every other Thursday on Zoom.

Every fiber of my being was telling me I need to be teaching people for the therapeutic benefit. I always used to start off my knitting classes with saying it’s exponential. If you teach somebody they teach somebody, how it can just proliferate the number of people that knit or crochet and I just had such great joy. I had done something to make the world better.

I truly believe that nobody gets through life unscathed. There’s going to be disappointments, trauma, all sorts of difficult things that you encounter in your life. Knitting and crochet is just one method in which it can help you but it can help you on so much more of a fundamental level. It does good things for your body. I think for the rest of my life I will be doing this to help people.