Croshitting update as of this morning:
I'm rapidly realising that the stroke affected more than I thought it did. This is probably something I should've realised sooner (and probably would have if I'd been back to PMP work) but since I've been out of my usual work since I had it besides tiny jobs here and there, it's been, uh. Interesting.
Not only have I forgotten how to hold my hook but I also have very poor motor control in my right hand. This is especially concerning because we thought the stroke didn't affect my right side, just my left hemisphere of the PFC and the LIFG. My grip tests showed no issue with articulation or dexterity on my right side. I noticed some things were "off" when I got back to fly tying (namely holding and positioning feathers in a 3D inner brain concept to find out where I actually want them on the hook shaft) but I chocked it up to picking up a hobby again that I'd been out of for too long. Figured it'd go away with time.
And it hasn't, really. I've just kind of adapted to the differences. I'm not as ambidextrous anymore and I'm much more left-hand dominant now.
So that brings me to the present, where I've completed a magic circle and three rounds only to lose my yarn tension and get a tangled mess. My biggest issue here is yarn tension. Even when my grip is proper, the yarn just slips through the fingers of my right hand in a way it really shouldn't.
I've never had to need accessibility tools for crocheting and now I feel like I'm a six year old autistic kid with shitty motor controls and poor dexterity all over again. I'm looking into tension rings just so I can keep a consistent gauge and avoid frizz and fray while I try to do this.
And it's frustrating. It's really, really frustrating. Not learning a new craft, because I'm a perfectionist and every craft is frustrating when I'm not immediately ok at it, but this specifically is EXTRA frustrating because it's something I've already overcome. It took me almost three years to learn how to crochet as a kid because the only person who could teach me was blind and also right-handed. I had to sit in front of her and watch her do her stitches and try to mimic it as a 6-9yo who had motor control so poor I couldn't even write my own name. She couldn't help me because she lost her sight almost a decade before and didn't remember how to describe the stitching to me visually. And eventually I figured it out because my hands were actually fine, it was just a brain issue of learning to control my little nipper fingers.
But it's different now. My brain is DAMAGED now. It's not a matter of learning how to loop and hold tension of the yarn around my finger, it's an issue of my finger not even being able to hear the input from my brain at all. It'll curl and hold and then it just randomly releases the hold that gives me tension after a round or two or five minutes depending on which comes first (usually the five minutes).
And I know life is unfair and all that. But this feels particularly unfair for some reason. I feel like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill again except I'm pretty sure it weighed a lot less when I was six.
