Journal

The Neuroscience of Making: Why Your Hands Matter More Than You Think

I’ve been fascinated with neuroscience for years – not in a white-coat-and-clipboard way, but in the way someone leans toward a warm fire. Ever since they started scanning people’s brains while having them do things, we could suddenly see all those connections lighting up, chemicals being released, neurons making new pathways.

And about twenty years ago, researchers started getting specific about what lit up the brain most brilliantly. What kept bits from withering and falling off as we age?

One of the answers surprised no one who’s ever picked up knitting needles or sat at a potter’s wheel: using your hands.

Not just any hand movement. The brain particularly loves it when both hands work together in a repetitive manner, ideally crossing the midline – your right hand moving to the left, your left hand to the right. Knitting. Embroidery. Kneading bread. Making felt beads. The kinds of things our grandmothers did without thinking twice about “brain health.”

The Research That Made Me Sit Up

Research from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging found that people who engaged in crafting activities such as sewing, woodworking, and ceramics from midlife through their 80s were 45% less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment—a significantly greater protective effect than starting these activities only in later life.

Forty-five percent. That’s enormous.

Even people who only started crafting in their 70s saw a 28% reduction in cognitive decline. But those who’d been making things with their hands since midlife? Nearly half the risk.

It’s hardly surprising when you think about it. One of the things that connects us most deeply to our ancestors is the making of things. Everything would have been made by hand – no machines, no factories. Clothes, pots, tools. Everything touched by human hands before it touched human lives.

Those of us who do craft have this route back to ancestors that’s so much easier than people who do no making with their hands.

What’s Actually Happening

When you make things with your hands, multiple processes work together: bilateral hand coordination engages both brain hemispheres, repetitive rhythms activate your calming parasympathetic nervous system, and tactile feedback from wool or thread or clay helps regulate your emotional state.

And when you get deep into making – when time slips away and you look up to find an hour has passed in what feels like minutes – you’re in what researchers call “flow.” Your prefrontal cortex quiets down. That critical voice saying “you’re not good enough, you’re doing it wrong”? It takes a nap. Your practiced hands take over.

Kelly Lambert at the University of Richmond calls this approach “behavioraceuticals” – giving people activities instead of pills to modify brain chemistry naturally. Think about knitting socks: your hands working across the midline, anticipation of the finished thing releasing dopamine, the rhythmic meditative quality producing serotonin. All of it modifying your brain chemistry through your own hands, your own attention, your own making.

A Different Path Than Biohacks

We’re getting used to the idea that we can do things to improve our long-term brain health. But so much attention has gone to what I think of as bro culture things: extreme exercise, fasting, cold water immersion, expensive supplements. Lots of measuring and competing and consumerism.

And I’ve always recoiled from it.

These approaches feel like deprivation for some future goal – a bit like Scotland’s Presbyterian history of restricting yourself for the future reward of heaven. But I think what we need is to train ourselves to be joyful in a difficult world, not to welcome deprivation in it.

Leaning Into Joy Instead

What if we took a different approach? Instead of deprivation, competition, and consumerism, what if we leaned into the things we actively like?

If you like cold water swimming, lean into that. But if you like knitting and making things, lean into that. Make it regular. Appreciate it for the genuine benefits it gives your brain.

Dancing. Singing. Laughing with friends. Playing the piano. Getting out into nature and swinging your arms as you walk. All of it lights up your brain.

Be joyful. Make things. And if you need permission to prioritize the things you love – particularly if that’s making things with your hands – here it is:

If you make things with your hands, you are nearly half as likely to have cognitive decline by the time you’re 85.

That’s worth knitting socks for. Worth making felt beads for. Worth sitting down with needle and thread for.

Where Old Stories Meet Making

This is what we do in The Studio. Not because we’re chasing cognitive benefits (though they’re lovely), but because making things with our hands connects us to something older and deeper than our rushed modern world usually allows.

We work at the pace of seasons. We use both hands to transform simple materials – wool, water, plants, thread – into objects that carry meaning. We gather around the digital fire and make things together.

Some weeks you might make a dozen felt beads. Some weeks you might make one. Both are blessed. Both are lighting up your brain, regulating your nervous system, giving your hands the work they were designed to do.

If this speaks to you – if you’re hungry for a way to make that feels grounded and gentle and rooted in something real – The Studio might be your place.

[Join The Studio →]

Key Research Sources

• Mayo Clinic research on crafting activities and cognitive decline in aging adults - Source: Roberts RO, et al. “Risk and protective factors for cognitive impairment in persons aged 85 years and older.” Neurology, published online April 8, 2015. American Academy of Neurology. Available at: https://www.aan.com/PressRoom/Home/PressRelease/1363
• Geda, Y.E., et al. (2018). “Engaging in mentally stimulating activities even late in life may protect against new-onset mild cognitive impairment.” JAMA Neurology. Mayo Clinic Study of Aging.
• Lambert, K. (University of Richmond) on behavioural interventions and brain chemistry 
• University of Gothenburg study on knitting and mental health Nordstrand, J., Gunnarsson, A. B., & Häggblom-Kronlöf, G. (2024). “Promoting health through yarncraft: Experiences of an online knitting group living with mental illness.” Journal of Occupational Science, 31(3), 504-515. DOI: 10.1080/14427591.2023.2292281
• Drexel University neuroimaging study on creative flow states Rosen, D., Oh, Y., Chesebrough, C., Zhang, F. (Zoe), & Kounios, J. (2024). “Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians.” Neuropsychologia, 196, 108824. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108824

This research informs our approach in The Studio, but we’re not scientists or medical professionals. We’re makers who’ve found that working with our hands at the pace of seasons brings something our rushed world often lacks.

Why We Gather: On Pockets Full of Treasures and Ancient Skills

Are you a gatherer? Someone who comes back from walks with pockets full of things? If so, this one’s for you.

I want to talk about why we do this – why we forage, beach comb, return from woodland walks with pockets full of acorns and seedheads and bits of bark. There’s something so compelling about it, something that makes us want to be surrounded by these small treasures. And I think it’s worth looking at what’s really going on here, because it’s more than just collecting pretty things.

The Women Who Gather

I’ve been thinking about this particularly because in the Studio right now, we’re just beginning a project based on an Irish traveler’s tale called “The Women Who Gather.” It’s this beautiful old story, and in those first few lines, you meet these old women in Ireland – and I’m imagining them in their long dark skirts, weathered hands, knowing eyes – and they’re walking the land each day, picking bits of sheep’s fleece off thorny bushes. Just these tiny wisps caught on blackthorn and gorse, things that most people would never even notice. And they gather them, and they use them to spin yarn.

That kind of walking along, looking out for things, keeping your eyes open for what wants to be found – that’s what we’re exploring in the Studio right now. We’re making felt beads. We’re looking for glimmers of wool amongst everything else. We’re sharing beauty as we go. And it’s got me thinking about this whole impulse to gather, to notice, to bring things home.

This is the work we’re doing together in The Studio right now through Threaded - learning to see like gatherers, to notice what calls to us, to transform simple materials into carriers of meaning. Not through complicated tutorials or guru-led programs, but as women working alongside each other, sharing what we find.

Come and see what we’re making together.

The Joy of Finding

One of the things we do in the Studio is these Friday live sessions. It’s just beautiful, really – we get together around five o’clock UK time, and we talk about what we’ve been seeing, what we’ve been reading, what we’re making. It’s very gentle, very conversational. People might be having a cup of tea, or still working on something with their hands while we talk.

And this past Friday, one of my members came on, and she was on holiday. She’s been staying in a camper van up in the northeast of England, at Whitby and she’d been on a beach walk that day, and she’d come back with this great pile of sea glass.

Now, if you’ve never collected sea glass, it’s broken glass that’s been in the sea for years – sometimes hundreds of years – and it’s been tumbled by the waves and the sand until it’s smooth and frosted. Almost like gemstones. These beautiful translucent pieces. And she had this collection – lots of green, lots of clear pieces, and then one bit of blue. Probably from an old medicine bottle, that particular shade. This gorgeous, glowing, dark blue.

And the joy in her voice when she was showing us this blue piece – “Look, I found this!” – it really struck me. She’d spent probably an hour or more, bent over, scanning the shoreline, sifting through pebbles, and she’d found this bit of beauty. This thing that has absolutely no monetary value whatsoever, but it stopped her in her tracks. It made her day.

There’s something really interesting going on here, when we get such deep pleasure from finding a lovely stone, an unusual bit of driftwood, an acorn with a perfect cap, a seedhead with interesting architecture, some oak leaves with particularly beautiful color. We bring them home. We put them on our windowsills, our desks, our shelves.

So I started wondering – what is this really about?

Four Threads

Ancient Connection: We’re Built for This

I think we need to go back to the idea of hunter-gatherers. You know, we go right back to prehistoric times, but actually gathering continued to be essential even well into agricultural times. There’s a lot of gathering that still went on – particularly women’s gathering.

Those Irish travelers with the fleeces – that tale would have been from the 8th, 9th century, maybe even earlier. And there they were, still walking the land, still looking for what could be found and used. These weren’t wealthy women. They were working with what the land offered freely.

And if you go back to the 18th century, for people living rurally – which was most people – up to 10% of their income came from foraging on the commons. Ten percent. That’s significant. That might be fleeces caught on thorns, like in our story. It might be food – there was gleaning, where after a crop had been gathered, you could go and take what hadn’t been collected. Whether that was corn or beet or chestnuts or apples, whatever. It could be firewood. It could be medicine.

And that’s another whole thing – lots of the plants that are used in medicines grow wild. But you need a keen eye to identify them. To look at a hedgerow full of plants and be able to spot the plantain amongst everything else. Or the yarrow. Or to see those tiny slivers of fleece on a prickly gorse bush. Or to notice the wild flax growing. Or to spot the fallen apples hiding in long grass.

These are really ancient skills. Skills that would have kept us alive. And we’ve spent thousands and thousands of years developing that part of our brain – the part that can look at a complex landscape and pick out what’s useful, what’s edible, what’s beautiful, what can heal.

So while we might be beach combing for sea glass and shells – things that to us now are decorative, or mementos, or just beautiful shapes – this comes from a culture where we were utterly reliant on these skills. We needed to be able to see what was there. Our survival depended on it.

And I think with our pockets full of shells, with our collections of interesting stones, with our jars of seedheads on the windowsill – we’re connecting back into that. There’s something in us that still responds to that. That still needs that. Even though we can just go to the shop and buy what we need, there’s something deeply satisfying about finding it ourselves. About using our eyes in that particular way.

Mindfulness and the Wandering Brain

The second thing that I think is going on is mindfulness. And I know that word gets used a lot, gets used for everything, but I mean it in quite a specific way here.

When we’re beach combing, or walking along a hedgerow looking for interesting things, we’re in this state of vague attention. We’re looking, but we’re not looking for anything specific. We’re open to what’s there. Our eyes are scanning, but softly. We’re walking, but slowly. We’re aware of what’s around us – the sound of the waves, or the birds, or the wind in the trees – but we’re not thinking about it. We’re just there.

And what happens in our brains when we’re in that state is really interesting. We’re not focused on a task. We’re not problem-solving. We’re not answering emails or thinking about our to-do list or worrying about something that might happen next week. Our brain gets to wander. To relax. To drop into a different frequency.

There’s something about that “vaguely looking” that stops us from being in our heads. We can’t check our phones while we’re bent over, scanning a beach for sea glass. We’re not on Instagram when we’re reaching into brambles for blackberries. We’re not running through our mental to-do list when we’re noticing which oak leaves have the most beautiful autumn color.

It becomes very mindful. It’s a meditation, really. But it’s an active meditation. A moving meditation. You’re not sitting cross-legged trying to empty your mind. You’re walking, looking, occasionally bending to pick something up, feeling the weight of it in your hand, the texture, deciding whether to keep it or put it back.

And I think for those of us who struggle with traditional sitting meditation – and I absolutely include myself in that – this kind of moving, looking, gathering practice can be incredibly powerful. It gives your brain something to do, but not too much. It gives your body something to do – the walking, the bending, the reaching. It engages your senses – what you’re seeing, what you’re touching, the smell of the sea or the woods or the earth.

You come back from a walk like that and you feel different. Calmer. More settled. Like you’ve touched something real.

Rebellion and the Non-Commercial

And then there’s this third thread, which I think is about rebellion. About resistance, even.

Because there’s something quite radical about cherishing items that have no commercial value whatsoever. That woman with her blue sea glass – she’s not going to sell it. She’s not thinking about its market value. She probably spent an hour finding it, which if you value your time at all, makes it “worth” far more than any amount of money you could get for it. But that’s not the point at all.

We’re not sifting for gold here. We’re not looking for things we can sell on eBay or at a car boot sale. We’re looking for things that speak to us personally. Things that have meaning that can’t be quantified. Things that matter because they matter to us, not because anyone else values them.

And I think there’s something really important about that. We’re moving ourselves out of the commercial realm entirely. We’re stepping outside of this constant pressure to monetize everything, to justify everything in terms of its financial value, to always be productive, always be hustling, always be thinking about the return on investment.

A jar of acorns on your desk has no ROI. A bowl of interesting stones contributes nothing to your bottom line. That piece of driftwood shaped like a bird doesn’t help you meet your quarterly goals.

And increasingly, I’m recognizing that the things that give the most pleasure, the most succor, the most feeling of wellbeing – these are things that can’t be connected to commerce. They can’t be bought. They can’t be sold. They can only be found, chosen, cherished.

It’s holding a stone that means something because you picked it up on a particular day, in a particular place, in a particular frame of mind. It’s collecting sea glass and arranging it somewhere beautiful just because it pleases you to see it there. It’s having a small pile of seedheads because you noticed them and thought they were lovely.

These things have no point in our striving. They’re not part of anything that will get you anywhere. They won’t improve your CV or expand your skills or build your business or make you more productive. They’re not even particularly useful.

And therefore, they’re done for love. For pleasure. For beauty. Because you want to. Because it’s a pleasant way of spending time. Because it makes you feel connected to something larger than yourself. Because it’s simply a good way to spend a life.

Beauty and the Eye That Sees It

And there’s one more thing I want to add to this, which is about beauty itself. About training our eyes to see it.

Because when you spend time gathering – when you spend time really looking – you start to see things differently. You notice more. You become attuned to color in a different way, to texture, to form, to light.

You start to see the way lichen grows in patterns on a stone. The way some shells have these perfect spirals. The way bark peels in layers. The particular angle of an interesting stick. The color variations in a single autumn leaf.

And I think this is something that women throughout history have always done. We’ve been the ones who noticed these things. Who saw the beauty in the everyday. Who picked up the interesting stone, the unusual shell, the bit of pottery worn smooth by the sea.

We’ve been the ones who arranged things – who put the special stones on the windowsill, who hung the dried flowers from the rafters, who kept the pretty buttons in a special tin. Not because we were taught to do this. Not because it was required. But because we had this eye for it. This capacity to see beauty and to want to be surrounded by it.

And I think when we’re gathering now – when we’re bringing home our pockets full of treasures – we’re continuing that tradition. We’re training that eye. We’re saying yes, beauty matters. Small things matter. The particular curve of this shell matters. The color of this stone matters. Not because anyone else will value it, but because I do.

Encircled by Found Things

You know, as I was writing this, I realized something. I looked around my workspace – the room where I’m sitting now – and I realized it’s almost encircled with thirty-two years of bringing beautiful things back from walks.

There’s a bowl of yellow shells I picked up in Brittany on our honeymoon. We walked on the beach every evening, and these particular shells were everywhere, and they were this beautiful soft yellow color, and I brought a handful home. That was 1993, and they’re still here, still in a bowl on my shelf.

There are sea-washed ceramic tiles from a beach in Barcelona. Fragments of old plates or cups or something, tumbled by the Mediterranean until they were smooth. I have no idea what they were originally. They’re just these beautiful curved pieces of blue and white pottery now.

There are bird skulls – I find them when I’m walking, and I bring them home and clean them carefully, and they sit on my shelves like small sculptures. There are nests that have blown out of trees in winter, abandoned, no longer needed. There are stones from particular places, particular walks, particular days.

I’m encircled by found things which are priceless to me. Which mark time in a way that a calendar never could. Which connect me to places I’ve been, to moments I’ve lived, to the particular quality of light on a particular morning.

They make this space feel like mine. They make my home feel like home. They’re not Instagram-worthy. They’re not styled or curated in any official sense. They’re just here. Because I wanted them here. Because they matter to me.

In Ancient Company

And I think that’s what gathering is really about, in the end. It’s about paying attention. It’s about seeing beauty. It’s about connecting to something ancient in us. It’s about stepping outside the commercial world for a moment and just noticing what’s there. What’s already there, freely given, waiting to be seen.

So yes, I’m a gatherer. I always have been. And if you are too, you’re in ancient company. You’re doing what women have always done – walking the land, keeping your eyes open, bringing beauty home.

And if you’d like to explore this with me, if this speaks to something in you, come and find me in the Studio. We’re gathering wool from thorny bushes – well, metaphorically – and we’re making felt beads, and we’re sharing what we find, and it’s gentle and slow and there’s no pressure to finish anything or make anything perfect. It’s just about the noticing. The gathering. The making. The being together.

This is where this work happens - where old stories meet making. Step into The Studio

 

Why I’m Loving Midlife More Than I Ever Loved Youth

There I was, standing in my garden path, watching a wasp eat an apple for half an hour.

Now, I could have felt guilty about this. Those apples were meant to become apple crumble, but somehow I’d stepped over that little pile for several days, heading down to work in the garden and thinking “I’ll get them later” - then mysteriously forgetting all about them on my way back to the house.

By the time I remembered, the blackbirds had found them. One apple had a great big hole pecked right through it, and there, deep inside that sweet flesh, was the most beautiful wasp I’d ever seen.

Nobody likes wasps, do they? We coo over bees and shriek at wasps, but this one was completely absorbed in its feast - so intent on filling itself up with apple that it didn’t notice me at all. I had time to fetch my phone and film it, watching the elegant way it worked, how efficiently it moved. It was utterly gorgeous.

The Beauty of Autumn Gardens

This happened during our first week in The Studio, where we were practicing noticing beauty in unexpected places, training our brains to look for the good. And it got me thinking about autumn - both in the garden and in life.

Autumn is my favorite season, even though technically it’s when the garden looks most chaotic.

In spring, my garden actually looks quite structured and neat. Everything’s been weeded and mulched, and I’m there desperately willing things to grow - “Come on, come on, something should happen!” It’s all anticipation and rushing energy.

Summer continues that rush. Is it a good summer for sweet peas? For tomatoes? For roses? There’s this constant pressure for things to perform to their best because that’s their only chance.

But then comes autumn, with its sudden temperature drop and cooler mornings. Things lose their structure and slump a little, but suddenly you see so much life - worms exploring, butterflies emerging from the nettle crops, birds everywhere as the fledglings feed themselves up for winter.

The Seasons of Our Lives

It struck me how perfectly this mirrors our human seasons.

In youth, we’re like spring gardens - desperately waiting for things to happen, trying to make things happen, feeling we’re not moving fast enough. I remember being in my twenties working as an art gallery curator, feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t accomplishing enough. Complete nonsense, but that rushing energy was so real.

Then come those middle years - the summer season - all about racking up accomplishments, doing the stuff, feeling like so much rides on getting that season right. Just like worrying whether your tomatoes will have a good year, there’s this pressure that if you don’t do it now, you’ll never get another chance.

But then arrives midlife. Our autumn season.

The Gift of Midlife

Something changes - exactly like that morning temperature shift that transforms the garden. Whether it’s perimenopause, menopause, or just the accumulation of lived experience, we shift. And I don’t think it changes us in a bad way. I think it changes us in a really, really good way.

It’s life lived. It’s wisdom earned. It’s the ability to say: this is me, this is who I am, these are my opinions.

I was in a business group recently where someone said, almost casually, “This works well for marketing wellness services because everybody hates their bodies, don’t they?”

I sat there thinking, “Actually, no. I don’t hate mine.”

Now, I know I may have an advantage here. Having had a health scare and thinking I might not make it to middle age completely changed how I see my body. Instead of seeing it as something substandard that needs fixing or filling or lifting, I see it as something amazing that just keeps going.

But imagine - what could we accomplish as women if we didn’t spend our time and energy hating our bodies? How much more money, time, and headspace would we have if we weren’t constantly criticizing ourselves?

Second-Flush Roses

This brings me to my climbing rose that covers the wall outside our bedroom window. In June, it’s absolutely covered in frothy pink flowers - everything summer should be, carefree and abundant.

But in September, when two or three branches refloom, those flowers are different. They’re slightly puckered, with an almost suede-like quality to the pink petals. They’re not as carefree as the June blooms.

And I love them so much more. So much more than that froth of summer.

They’re like us in midlife - textured by experience, marked by the seasons we’ve weathered, but possessing a beauty that’s deeper, more complex, more interesting than anything youth could offer.

Embracing Your Season

This is what I’ve learned: midlife isn’t about trying to recapture the dewy perfection of our twenties or the ambitious energy of our forties. It’s about appreciating this season for what it uniquely offers - wisdom, authenticity, the courage to be ourselves, and yes, a different kind of beauty.

Like that wasp in the apple, absorbed and content with its feast. Like autumn gardens full of unexpected life. Like second-flush roses with their complex, hard-won beauty.

We are exactly where we’re meant to be, in exactly the season we’re meant to be in.

And there’s something revolutionary about embracing that.

What’s your favorite season - in the garden and in life? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

If this resonates with you, you might love The Studio - my online membership where we explore slow, seasonal making that blends creativity with meaning. It’s a place for women who want to work at the pace of seasons and find deeper connection through their hands. Learn more here.

Why You Should Stop Feeling Guilty About Your Unfinished Craft Projects

Every creative person I know has a cupboard full of works in progress. Embroidery kits barely started. Sweater backs waiting for sleeves. A stack of patchwork squares pinned with the best intentions.

And far too often, that cupboard also contains guilt.

One of the most resonant threads to come out of the About Time masterclass last week was this exact issue—abandoned projects and the self-blame that goes with them. So in this week’s video, I’m unpacking that idea, and offering a different perspective

You can watch the full masterclass here
Replays of About Time are available until the end of June 2025.

Why We Feel Like Quitters

So many of us carry this narrative: “I never finish anything.” It’s more than a complaint—it’s a judgement. A perceived failure of discipline or character.

But what if it isn’t personal?

Most of us grew up in a culture where sticking it out was the virtue. You chose a career early and stayed the course. Commitment was praised. Changing your mind wasn’t.

In that world, finishing meant success. So it makes sense that we’ve internalised the idea that stopping—or changing course—is shameful.

But here’s the truth: the world has changed. The way we work, create, and live is unrecognisable compared to that 40-year-job-for-life model. What looks like “not finishing” might actually be evolving. Listening. Choosing better.

The Beauty of Starting

There’s also a lot to love about starting.

Starting something new means curiosity is alive. Starting takes courage. Starting is creative.

We don’t expect every artist to turn every sketch into a masterpiece. We don’t expect every seed to grow. So why should our crafts be any different?

Half-finished doesn’t mean failed. It means you were open to trying.

Let’s Talk About Sunk Costs

Another layer of guilt comes from all the money and time we’ve “wasted.” That’s sunk cost thinking—and it’s poison to creativity.

Yes, you bought the yarn. Yes, you started the project. But if it no longer serves you, that doesn’t mean it was a mistake. It was part of your journey. It taught you something. Even if all it taught you was that you don’t enjoy that stitch.

Sunk costs aren’t proof of failure. They’re the artefacts of a creative life.

What To Do With All That Stuff

The problem isn’t the unfinished projects themselves—it’s what we do with them. If they live in a cupboard whispering guilt and self-doubt, that’s a problem.

But if we bring them into the light, talk about them, repurpose them, or even pass them on—they become something else entirely. They become part of our story.

That’s what we’re doing inside The Studio this summer.

From July to August, we’re taking a break from new tutorials and using the time to revisit, reclaim, and reimagine what’s already here. That includes stash deep-dives, shared stories of UFOs (unfinished objects), and making space—for finishing, repurposing, or releasing.

No shame. No pressure. Just creative honesty

If you want to be part of that conversation, you can join The Studio here. Supported places are available.