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poverty reductions in Vietnam. Paul Greenhalgh, director of Corcoran Museum said, ‘Craft has changed its meaning fundamentally at least three times in the last two centuries, and it means fundamentally different things from nation to nation even in the western world’(Victoria and Albert Museum, 2012, online). Traditional crafts shows that it still has value in today’s society through its role in the community. For instance, knitting brought a community together in a deprived part of Birmingham. The ‘Creative Moments’ association; was founded by Phillipa England. She noticed a high level of isolation and depression in the community and started the project of knitting a community garden, bringing together school children, local residence, knitting groups and hospital patients. Betsan Corkhill from the Stitchlinks research programme described the community project as, ‘A highly successful, intergenerational community project which helped to integrate people from diverse backgrounds back into a community from which they had been previously isolated’ (Stitchlinks, 2012, online). This is an amazing and valuable effect knitting has had on a society. Knitting’s value on a society could include therapeutic qualities, psychological and physical benefits. Also other benefits that most of the world does not know about but researchers such as those at Stitchlinks have experimented with the positive effects of knitting on people with physical and psychological problems such as arthritis and obsessive compulsive disorder and have found that knitting has improved their condition. Within Stitchlinks research their participant’s progress was recorded in ‘Stitchlinks: Quotes V from knitters’. Participants with physical pain said on knitting, ‘When the pain is bad it gives me something to concentrate on it gets me through the ‘waiting for the tablets to kick in’ time. At three in the morning it’s saved my life’ (2007, p.6). Another said ‘Knitting helps me maintain my mobility in my hands, it is painful and difficult to get moving in the morning and without the motivation of knitting for my grandchildren, I think my fingers would long ago have seized up’ (2007, p.6). Another participant said, ‘My specialist noticed that the knitting has kept my hands mobile as he was expecting me to lose my fine motor movement by now’. These accounts of physical improvement because of knitting are amazing. It is surprising that this research has not been tried out across the nation for pain management. In terms of psychological research, Stitchlinks participants spoke of knitting, ‘I could do it well. It made it easier to face a world where it seemed I could do nothing right’ (2007, p.6). Another participant said, ‘If I couldn’t knit I would be in a ball rocking to cope. Knitting is a great way to ease the pain, the stress, reduce medication…Knitting is what gets me through the day’ (2007, p.6). Another said of knitting, ‘Knitting is something I can do anywhere with very little tools. I take my knitting on the train and other situations where I am prone to be more anxious’ (2007, p.6). The calming quality of knitting is having profound effects on these participants with psychological problems. Here it would seem that it is the process of knitting that is valuable for these people. It does not really matter what they are knitting, it is the act of following a pattern and getting lost in knitting that is valuable for