Margaret Oomen, blogger at Resurrection Fern, is taking summer crafting to a new level: out into the garden and beyond and mixing fibre and nature to make rock babies and acorn necklaces. Do try this at home – the results are stunning.

We get a fair few phonecalls in the Simply Knitting office, and many of our readers tell us that they're disabled. I've been pondering knitting and disability a lot lately, partly because a friend from university with acquired brain injuries has recently learned to knit, and another friend has had a baby born with oxygen starvation.

If you're a regular Simply Knitting reader, you'll know all about Stitchlinks, which supports knitters and other stitchers who are isolated by circumstance and illness. Betsan, who founded Stitchlinks, is now doing research into the therapeutic benefits of knitting and looking at how it helps people with long-term health problems and disabilities. Because it uses both hands and is repetitive, there's the possibility that it actually helps forge connections within the brain, which would help people who'd had strokes or some other brain-damaging illness. Of course, the research is in its infancy and we'll have to wait for the results to come out to know for sure if knitting has any definite physical effect, but the thought that something as simple as two sticks and some string could make a concrete difference to serious health problems is a thrilling one.

The benefits of knitting are more than purely physical, though. There's the pleasure of making something beautiful and of being able to spend time on something enjoyable. If you join a knitting group or an online group like Stitchlinks or even Ravelry there's a social aspect to knitting as it encourages people to socialise and enjoy their hobby together, which can help people with conditions like depression as well as those whose lack of mobility can leave them feeling lonely and unable to get out and see people as much as they'd like. Many disabled knitters are incredibly generous people: having knitted for their families and friends, they also knit for various charities, helping everyone from premature babies to the elderly as well as benefitting themselves from a fulfilling hobby.

Some disabled knitters have to overcome great obstacles to enjoy their hobby, whether it's using something to hold their needles if they have arthritis, say, or, as in the case of my friend, using an abacus to keep track of rows because conventional row counters are too small and fiddly. One reader who phoned us explained that since her stroke she's concentrated on making very small items as they're not too heavy. I find myself wondering how blind knitters choose yarns, not the textures but the colours, and how easy it is to get braille patterns. If you're a disabled knitter, what do you find helpful? And is there a gadget or item that you wish existed, or was more common, to help you with your hobby?

If you're thinking about knitting Quinn's gorgeous Hat Attack hat pattern from page 97 of issue 43, then please note that there's a mistake in the first "note". We printed:

Note: The main body of this hat is knit in a P2, K2, P1, K2, P1 rib pattern.

That final P1 should not be there!  It should actually read:

Note: The main body of this hat is knit in a P2, K2, P1, K2 rib pattern.

The hat uses an unusual rib pattern, and it's important to get it right from the cast on otherwise it's rather frustrating!

To find out more about Hat Attack 2, the second round of this excellent online knitting contest which launches in September, visit the Hat Attack website or check out their group on Ravelry.