This one has been all over the web. Apparently knitting can help you cope with the trauma in your life. Caught up in a revolution? Forced to watch a slasher film? Knitting can help prevent those nasty flashbacks.

The study of how people's memories of traumatic events are affected by what they were doing at the time could help to prevent accident victims from having flashbacks.

It could also explain the effectiveness of worry beads in reducing tension and why the tricoteuses of the French Revolution, who knitted while watching people being guillotined and inspired Dickens' character Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities, never apparently experienced post-traumatic stress disorder.

Posted by Hilary at May 1, 2004 09:09 PM