Knitting for connection and community with Kristina LaVenia

Have you ever stressed yourself our by overcommitting to gift knitting? Do you end up being exhausted by the festive season? Then we have a bonus episode for you! Subscribe to the Creative Restoration newletter here to receive our bonus episode as soon as it is released on 14th November to help you keep your self-care on track during Christmas, and continue to use knitting to benefit your mental wellbeing.

This is the final episode in series 7 - thank you so much for listening!

Joining me this week is Kristina LaVenia who is a senior lecturer in leadership at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has collaborated with Project Knitwell on research delivering knitting workshops for staff in educational settings.

Kristina speaks about her own journey using knitting throughout the pandemic, and her experience of offering this as an intervention to others.

You can follow Kristina on Instagram here: @klavenia

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🧶 Come and join our new community on Patreon! Perks include early access to podcasts, weekly behind the scenes videos and a monthly online knitting circle. This will enable us to connect more meaningfully with you all, grow the podcast and share more resources about knitting, creativity and wellbeing.

🧶 If you'd like to learn more about how to use knitting for your self-care, check out our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time.

🧶Catch up on our on-demand webinars:

The Healing Power of Knitting where we take a deep dive into the mental health benefits of knitting

Unravelling Burnout where we look at how we can use knitting as a tool to prevent burnout

Knitting for Attention and Focus. We explore how knitting and crochet can support concentration, attention and mindful awareness, particularly for people who struggle with restlessness, distractibility or overwhelm.

Here's how to stay in touch:

💌 Sign up to the Creative Restoration newsletter

📲 Follow us on Instagram at @knittingistherapeutic and @drpaularedmond

Mentioned in this episode:

Join our community on Patreon!

We'd love you to join us on Patreon - you can support the podcast while accessing perks such as early access to new episodes, our weekly behind the scenes videos and join our monthly online knitting circle.

Self-Care One Stitch at a Time - Live!

We wanted to let you know that we will be running our first ever live cohort of our course Self-Care One Stitch at a Time in January 2027. Join the priority waiting list If like me, you find it hard to stick with a pre-recorded online course and fit it into your schedule, and prefer the accountability and community of a live course then this is the course for you! The course will run for 6 weeks from the 6th of January, and will consist of 6 pre-recorded videos which you can watch at a time that suits you, and 6 live online sessions (on Zoom) run each Wednesday evening for 6 weeks. Self-Care One Stitch at a Time is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) techniques and is designed to help you use knitting intentionally to benefit your well-being. We cover topics including how to connect with your values, using knitting for mindfulness, how to choose your next knitting project with your self-care needs in mind. Plus we look at mistakes and traps that crop up in our relationship with knitting and how to navigate them. We are limiting the group size to just 12 spaces in order to keep the group small enough for discussions – so if you’d like to join us you can click here to join the priority waiting list and you’ll be the first to know when tickets are released.