I learnt that knitting could make it OK when I was a child. I subconsciously received this information from an animated character called Nelly, who was the co-star of the children’s TV series Noah and Nelly. Noah and Nelly was the 1976 creation of Grange Calveley. His five-minute cartoons depicted a world very loosely based around Noah's Ark, each episode ended in some sort of disaster with the day being saved by Noah's wife Nelly, who used her knitting skills to make objects which solved the problem in some way or other. Nelly was an ambitious knitter, knitting everything from drilling rigs to crash helmets.

I have knitted since I was a teenager, studying knitted textiles at both undergraduate and masters level. Knitting has been a key part of my life for nearly forty years. However I was not conscious of how far it had permeated me until after my daughter was born. I suffered from post-natal depression, feeling completely alienated in my new role. In desperation I turned to my knitting. Whilst working from a commercial pattern for a pair of baby’s pram-trousers I felt OK, deriving a huge amount of reassurance from the movements my hands made as the work grew. This was something from the time before motherhood that could be my companion during the early, difficult days of motherhood. The familiar to counteract the unfamiliar.

“In the end, everything will be ok. If it's not ok, it's not yet the end” - Fernando Sabino