Today when I awoke, the mugging feeling inside was gone. The air felt light and the sun streamed in the kitchen windows now that it is high enough in the sky to clear the redwoods that grow along our back fence. When we planted those trees, it never occurred to me that they would eventually block the sun in the winter.
The hope is that the Santa Ana winds will dry up all the moisture that got under our house during the recent rains, but not drop any live electrical wires in the yard or blow over any of those redwood trees. As the Gilder Radner character, Rosannadana, used to say "It's always something."
Watching the lime tree shake around with the almost constant wind gusts has upped my stress level again. It started with the rain issues on top of deadlines. I did send in the edits of KNOT DEAD AGAIN on time on Monday, but it only cleared the way for finishing Classy Yarns by the March 31 deadline.
Luckily, I have come up with a way to deal with it and that gives me something to show for it. You probably already guessed that it has something to do with crochet. In the Crochet Series, I talk about one of the characters having an emergency kit to deal with her anxiety. It's a ball of string and a crochet hook meant be used and reused. She just makes a chain of crochet stitches not meant to become anything. I wanted some different. Something that wouldn't make me tenser by being too complicated, but would be pleasing and become something usable.
I have an affinity for granny squares because,well, leaning to make one literally changed my life. So I grabbed a J hook and some Red Heart Yarn called Stripes and started a granny square. As soon as it began to take shape, I felt my body begin to unclench. The original plan was to mix in some rows of black yarn, but I didn't want to have to worry about changing colors and weaving in all those ends, so it has become a growing granny square of the the one yarn. The bright colors make me smile and every time I work on it, I feel the stress dissolve. Unfortunately, the stress does come back, but then I take a crochet break and feel better.
Eventually, it will be the size of a small throw and hopefully a reminder of how healing it is to work with yarn.
9 comments:
Good morning -- Glad your weather is clearing -- blue skies and sunshine can certainly brighten a person's mood.
Aren't those Stripes yarn great -- I have the Cool Stripes, Calm Stripes and Retro Stripes -- all work up beautifully. I used the Retro for a blanket doing nothing but rows of double crochet. Right now I'm using the Speckle yarn in a basketweave pattern. Have you ever thought about all the yarn ends there would be on a c2c following a graph for some sort of picture? I looked up a pattern and good gosh, what a mess it would be - at least, that's the way it looks to me. The woman who was doing it had a wooden plank sort of thing with a peg to hold each skein of yarn. She talked about how it was necessary to keep all the yarn untangled and how it had to be flipped in a certain way. Seems to me that would be very stressful -- no thank you!! I'm like you -- crocheting is calming.
I'm making a good dent in my stash of yarn with my crocheting and also donated some. A friend of a friend works with some sort of girl's club and she thought it would be great if they learned to crochet, but she couldn't afford to buy yarn for all of them. I gladly gave her about 30 skeins and a bunch of H hooks -- for some reason I'd accumulated a lot of them.
My grandson is back from his week at the beach -- he said it was one of the best weeks of his life!! From what I've heard, they did nothing but play on the beach and eat junk food -- perfect for 14-year-old boys!! One of the boys had a bit of a trauma -- he was being pulled into the water by a wave and was starting to panic -- my grandson ran for a life guard to help.
Enjoy your granny square crocheting, your writing and the sunshine.
Patty, I agree about keeping crochet calming. I have to be in the right mood to make things like the sunflower. I noticed a mistake in my granny square when I looked at the photo. It's minor and I decided to leave. It's not supposed to be perfect.
I need to weed out more of my yarn too.
It sounds like a great time for your grandsons-- except the part about being pulled in the water. How scary.
I am definitely enjoying the sunshine.
I hadn't notice a mistake until you mentioned there was one -- I see it. That is so easy to do -- I try to count carefully but every once in a while I'll be making the next row and notice a mistake -- I've noticed that too many stitches is less noticeable than too few. If it doesn't involve a major frogging, I'll fix it. I figure the kids I make the blankets for probably aren't going to count stitches!!
Crochet is one of my favorite anxiety reliever. Hope everything works out well for you. Thanks for sharing your writing talents.
Patty, I agree that extra stitches in granny square are less noticeable. Life is a lot easier if you can live with imperfection.
Sally, The best part of using crochet for anxiety is there are no bad side effects. Things always do work themselves out. Thank you for the appreciation.
I love your crochet. It is so pretty. Right now I am working on a granny square afghan. It is one square that just gets bigger and bigger. I have to decide how big to make it. It's just so much fun to get lost in the stitches.
Chkntza, that is the plan for the pictured piece. In the past I have put in rows of black yarn around the colors, but this time I'm just sticking with one yarn. The colors look better in person. Keeping it simple is such a stress reliever.
How fun that you can use so many things as inspiration for your crocheting, Betty--and that your crocheting is so helpful to your state of mind.
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