Back at the beginning of the year, two things happened. One, I embarked on two blanket projects, one for a friend and the other for M. Two, work became very busy, with 12- or 13-hour days being the norm for about four months.

Most of my craft projects fell by the wayside as I went into auto-pilot to get through the work-days, and then sat, zombie-like, on the sofa at the weekend to try and recover enough to get through the next week.

But my blanket projects helped.

The first was made up of granny “square” hexagons, in chunky aran yarn, and I could complete a hexagon in my lunch-break. Because I used a granny square pattern, I didn’t need to think or concentrate much. I could just get out my crochet hook and my yarn, and off I went, and my brain could have a little sleep.

The second was made of a patchwork of solid granny squares, where each patch was made of a single ball of yarn. Again, no real concentration required. While I couldn’t complete one in a lunch-break, it still allowed my brain to switch off.

I’d call it mindfulness, but, really, it was more mindlessness. Very little thought involved until I needed to work out a pattern for putting the patches together.