Tag Archives: stress

Stress Knitting… or not

Hi Folks. It’s been a minute.

Well, it’s been a minute for me. Last time I wrote a post, I had a sizeable backlog/buffer of posts, but I’ve fully burned through them. I’m now coming to you in real time, or near enough, anyway.

And, I gotta tell you, it’s been a wild month+. First, my (vaccinated! Yay!) in-laws came for their first visit since well before my (6-month-old) baby was born. Then, a few weeks later, my (also vaccinated!) parents came to visit, too! Both visits were lovely, and it was so fun seeing my kids get to interact with their grandparents in person for the first time in ages. But, having gone so long without visitors, suddenly having so many people in my house was tiring for this introvert.

And then, the baby got a couple weird diagnoses that, while not unexpected, we had been hoping against. He’ll be fine in the long run; we caught everything early, have good insurance and even untreated, nothing is life-threatening. But it’s been really hard having to go through the whole diagnosis-and-treatment thing with such a little guy. He’s handling everything well, but it’s been tough to have to watch him go through.

AND THEN, the entire west coast was basically cooked for the last week. We’re in Seattle, and we’re one of the “lucky ones,” which means we have a sad little window air conditioner and a basement. It got up to 102 degrees in our back yard. Our upstairs was in the low 90s every afternoon for 4 days. Trying to keep 2 kids safe, fed, hydrated and sleeping on schedule under those conditions is stressful to say the least.

So, all that’s to say, I haven’t really been in the knitting mood lately. I’ve been making some progress on the wedding blanket, which I still like a lot, but for some reason I haven’t been feeling real inspired to have a gigantic wool blanket on my lap. It’s a true mystery.

I’m thinking I might do something simple and familiar- maybe socks? Or something fun and silly- a stuffed animal for one of the kids? Or I might change medium entirely and try busting out the sewing machine. Not sure yet. But, I’m letting myself take the time I need to get back to my knitting. After all, knitting’s not a race, and it’ll still be there whenever I’m ready for it.

What do you do when you’re too stressed out to knit?

A Short Pause

I love being busy.  To me “a day with nothing to do” means “a day I can work on extra projects.  I  could work on my yard, knit up a sweater, write out a new pattern, make some peach sorbet, or get a jump on my blog writing.

But, it seems like this summer it’s been a little too busy.

I’ve been keeping up with the blog, of course, and working my two day jobs.  I’ve been working on several super-secret freelance design projects (stay tuned for more details!).  Plus, I have a puppy to take care of, a house to keep clean and dandelions to battle in the yard.  And, we keep having visitors stop by.

I love all of these things-  Our house guests have been fantastic, my jobs are great and I couldn’t be happier with how my patterns are turning out.

But there are only so many hours in the day, and I’m starting to get a little frazzled.

Luckily, today is a magical, amazing, special day.  A day when I don’t actually have to go into work!  It’s 9:30, and I’m still in bed.

Sure, I’ve already put in a good hour and a half of knitting time and I’m writing today’s blog post from my laptop, but it’s so much more pleasant to “work” from bed with music playing and a cup of coffee, my pup curled up at the foot of my bed.

My goal today is to knit as much as possible.  And that’s it!  It’s kind of great to only have one thing to do today.

So, I’ll sip my coffee, listen to my music, and knit another row.  (And then another, and another.)

Sometimes that’s all you need to refresh your brain.

And now, a picture of my dog having a very important conversation with his squirrel toy:

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