Watching the yarn as it moves around the knitting needles on its way to create a garment brings deep satisfaction and a sense of calm to consultant perinatal psychiatrist Chrissy Jayarajah.

One of her earliest memories was watching her grandmother knit and sew during annual holidays to Sri Lanka. Her mother is a keen crocheter and she taught Jayarajah the technique when she was 5.

“I used to carry a plastic bag to my primary school with all my knitting things and sit knitting in the playground, so I started quite early,” says Jayarajah, who is clinical lead for perinatal mental health services at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. “I could only really do straight rows at that point.”

As she became a teenager and then went on to medical school, she drifted away from the

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