incongruent inheritance – The Creative Hook

There is something poignant about finding myself back where I began.

Not in a dramatic, cinematic way; more in the way you open a drawer you haven’t looked in for years and think, oh… yes, yes this makes sense entirely, you again, welcome and thank you please…

I’ve been crocheting mostly presents. BLANKETS for people I care about, stitched in between work and study and stress and worry and the general swirl of life. And somehow, without planning it, I’ve looped right back to baby blankets, the very thing that started this whole crochet obsession in the first place.

It feels like an inheritance I didn’t consciously choose, more like one that chose me, to call on a cliche…

An incongruent inheritance.

The kind that doesn’t quite match the job title, or the LinkedIn summary, or the “what do you do?” at parties

AND

It still fits, quietly, stubbornly, beautifully:

The beginning that never really ended. The full circle. The nicely tied off final knot.

Baby blankets were my starting point. My turning point from arty farty conceptual work HERE into a usable crafty gifts area.

The soft colours, the repetitive rows, the way the fabric slowly grew under my hands, out of thin air, out of strands of yarn; it was the first time I realised crochet wasn’t just a craft. It was a therapeutic tool, a grounding mechanism, a way of regulating myself long before I had the language for any of that.

I didn’t just make blankets.

I made space for myself.

I made calm.

I made continuity.

I made connections.

And then, naturally, I started sharing my creations with others, because once something becomes part of your internal architecture, it’s impossible not to let it spill outward. At least for me…

The STARs that took over

Updating the blankets page this week showed me in no uncertain terms that I have indeed become a 6-day Star blanket-obsessed enthusiast and crocheter.

And have you spotted the STARs on HER?

I had realised how joyful they are. How unapologetically bright. How they look like they’re trying to guide someone somewhere, even if that someone is just me, scrolling through other people’s creations of these on a Facebook group dedicated to them, through connection with others’ work, ‘stealing’ time to spend crocheting when the next assignment deadline is looming around the corner. No matter, sometimes the simplest joy, even the accidentally allocated moments of it, are worth it!

There’s something moving and emotional about meeting others through the connections we made and maintained by engaging with other members of crochet communities.

The colours we choose.

The stitches we repeat.

The tiny decisions that reveal who we are and what we like.

The yarns we discover when other people have shared their stars.

The stars feel like a connection. They grow quickly. They are easy to adapt and make into individual pieces, unique and individual by the choices that each contributor to the community makes, AND connected all the same. In a way, same as the stars in the night sky.

So What Now?

My job role has moved on; crochet hasn’t! Professionally, I’m in a different place now. New responsibilities, new expectations, new language.

Yet, crochet hasn’t politely stepped aside to let the “grown-up job” take over. It’s still here, woven into how I think, how I connect, how I care.

This is the incongruence:

My official role has shifted, but the thread hasn’t snapped. If anything, it’s thicker.

I’m considering running a staff wellbeing crochet group again, now that I have more time to use as I choose… A quiet, grounding space where people can sit, stitch, decompress, and maybe discover the same therapeutic rhythm that helped me find my footing years ago, both personally and professionally. Crochet directed me here, so I am very grateful for it, ALWAYS! Even if my job description doesn’t say it, crochet is still part of my work because it is an integral part of my identity and one of my core, meaningful occupations.

Updating the blankets page as an act of reclaiming. Refreshing the blankets page wasn’t just housekeeping. It felt like finally presenting and acknowledging a part of myself I’d accidentally left in the corner for a while. A reminder that the things we make are not static, they evolve with us, and we evolve with them. The BLANKETS page feels like a living archive now.

Not a gallery of finished objects, but a record of growth, return, continuity and connection.

A small teaser for what’s coming next…

Because, and this is the part that makes me smile, the blankets have left the house, they have flown the nest, if you please… Literally.

The next post talks about the latest beach trip, on a windy, winter day, holding them up in the wind, letting them billow like sails or flags, or something in between. There was something unexpectedly freeing about it, the colours against the sky, the movement, the sense that these soft, domestic objects suddenly belonged to a much bigger landscape. But that’s a story for next time.