What do Prime Publishing (I Like Crochet’s parent company), the month of April, and 234 lemon stress balls have in common? As it turns out, quite a bit!
When you think of April, there’s a certain looming deadline that comes to mind: Tax Day, which falls on April 18th in the United States this year. You
What do Prime Publishing (I Like Crochet’s parent company), the month of April, and 234 lemon stress balls have in common? As it turns out, quite a bit!
When you think of April, there’s a certain looming deadline that comes to mind: Tax Day, which falls on April 18th in the United States this year. You can imagine that this would be a pretty stressful time of year for many, and considering that April has been named National Stress Awareness Month, that’s probably a pretty popular opinion.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, too much stress can cause headaches, insomnia and depression, and over time it can lead to more severe issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. These are some serious side effects from something that, chances are, everyone feels on occasion. If you’re stressed already, hearing about all of those side effects probably doesn’t help. Fortunately, there are many ways to relieve and manage stress, and two of them might surprise you: knitting and crocheting!
In order to spread the news that some of our favorite hobbies can help make us happier, the Craft Yarn Council
decided to host the #StitchAwayStress Big Apple Lemon Drive during the last part of 2015. The aim was to collect knit and crochet lemon stress balls that will be passed out to taxpayers on the streets of New York City on Tax Day in 2016. Each of the stress balls will be fitted with a tag that proclaims the stress-relieving benefits of knitting and crocheting to help get the word out.
Over on Prime Publishing’s yarn blog, Stitch and Unwind, we spent the month of November collecting knit and crochet lemon stress balls to send to the Craft Yarn Council. Our readers had a blast working up these lemons using patterns by Vogue Knitting and crochet blogger Twinkie Chan, and before long the lemons started piling up. By the end of the month we had collected 234 knit and crochet lemon stress balls!
We’re looking forward to seeing the outcome of the Big Apple Lemon Drive as a whole and can’t wait for more people to discover the benefits of knitting and crocheting. If you want to see some of the contributions to the cause, check out the hashtag #stitchawaystress on Instagram and Twitter! 