Why I Give Students Crochet Hearts

For two semesters now, I’ve been making little crochet hearts and giving them to students in my classes. The idea is inspired by something Mays Imad does: she has these beautiful little hearts made of stone, different colors, beautiful textures, and she gives then out when she’s giving a workshop. She gave me a bunch when she was in Cairo, but I decided to keep these for myself, and instead adapt her idea to something sustainable that I could do every semester going forward, and to adapt it so that it represented and symbolized several things for me. Hence, crochet hearts.

One of the first assignments students do in my class is to watch my conversation with Mays Imad during COVID, “How is your heart?” one of the Equity Unbound/OneHE community building resources. The video introduces trauma-informed pedagogy and students tend to feel very grateful for it, to feel like as a professor I understand them and some struggles they may be going through. I reassure them that when I ask them how they’re feeling each class, I don’t just ask to hear “fine”, but I really want to know and to acknowledge that we are not always OK, and sometimes most of us are not. It’s not all trauma, but sometimes it can be, whether collective trauma (from COVID, from the genocide in Palestine) or individual trauma for reasons they need not disclose to me unless they want to.

When they walk into class and I invite them to take a crochet heart, they can usually make a connection between the video and the hearts. I like maintaining a connection between Mays herself and this adaptation of mine. But crochet hearts mean so much to me!

• Crochet is something I got into recently as a way to bond with my daughter. I knew a tiny bit of useless crochet when I was younger. They taught us in school how to make stitches but never how to make something useful with it. When I got back into crochet, I told my daughter we could learn from YouTube, and I found 10 minute crochet projects. The first of which was crochet hearts. The picture in the featured image was the first one I ever made.
• Crochet is a handicraft that can only be done by hand. It cannot be fully automated like other forms of textile and clothes making. It reminds me in a time of AI of the beautiful things humans can do that machines cannot
• I have rheumatoid arthritis. When I was first diagnosed, my hands were in such pain I could not hold a key, a pen, use buttons on anything in the kitchen, even hold my child’s hand. I thought I would never play piano again or do anything like crochet. But I am on medication and most of the time my hands are good now. Doing crochet was exhilarating because it gave me hope and made me realize my disease does not define me or restrict me from that many things.
• I am OK at crochet but not perfect. The process of learning it made me conscious of the value of failure in the process of learning, and to embrace “frogging” (undoing work when you make a mistake then redo it). I show them how all the hearts are made in the same way but look different depending on the yarn I use, the needle, my tension on the yarn that particular day. Some may have imperfections, and that’s OK. Lifelong learning means accepting that we will be really bad at something at first before we get better, and that’s OK.
• I ask them what they would do with the hearts and I love their answers. Some put them on keychains or on their bags. Some give it to a friend or someone they feel could benefit from a pick me up.

I have loved this practice so much so far (3 classes in 2 semesters) that I am hoping to do this for an upcoming class and also for an upcoming retreat. I am selecting yarns whose colors are relevant to the retreat. I love that the little hearts are not particularly useful, but they’re also not useless. You make what you want of it. I am doing an independent study this semester and it’s with a guy. I wonder how awkward the heart giving will be, but I don’t want to skip it. He will miss so much of the interactivity I usually have in my classes, and I want to preserve what is possible. The crochet hearts are possible. It takes me now less than 5 minutes to make one, and I am so proud of the stash I am accumulating ahead of time to avoid having to rush for a deadline. Because crochet should also be a wellbeing practice, but when you do it for a deadline (as my daughter has shown me) it can be anxiety-provoking. A reminder that even things we love are not always guaranteed to bring us joy. Just like cooking, or baking. If I bake because I am in the mood it is joyful and so different than if I have to bake a certain amount for a bake sale. That’s more stressful. I guess some people learn to make the thing that they love their job in ways that don’t reduce the joy, but not all things.