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Like readers, crafters are my people. After obsessing over The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater by Alanna Okun last year, I’ve been seeking out more crafting memoirs (I also loved Hooked by Sutton Foster) and recently finished Easy Crafts for the Insane by Kelly Williams Brown. WOOF. Easy Crafts for the Insane is written in such a way that I immediately wanted to befriend KWB because she is so funny and skillful in her examinations of different crafts she enjoys as well as reflections on her incredible life experience. I had a really tough injury, surgery, and rehab last year, and this was the first time I came across someone speaking about pain, injury, and recovery in a way that felt true to my own experience — it was in turns eerily similar, hilarious, and validating. It’s incredibly humbling (and psychologically challenging) be an independent, able bodied individual one moment and to be frustrated by your body and it’s limitations the next. So much of that is a running theme of this book, whether she is speaking about physical illnesses or mental ones. KWB is a writer by trade, and you can tell! She weaves a narrative about the most challenging times in her life together with the role that crafting plays in helping her to get out of her own head — everything from paper stars, dragon eggs, and purler beads to divorce, depression, politics, and the pandemic. This is not a comprehensive list of content warnings, but CW for depression, hypomania, suicide, psychiatric intervention, and the years 2016-2020; please check for more before reading! Image description: A kindle displaying the ebook cover of Easy Crafts for the Insane is surrounded by a series of sloppily crafted lucky paper stars (made using the tutorial provided in the book) via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CurgAorL6Wi/