Sock Therapy

There's something to the idea of Zen and the Art of Knitting.

I was in the foulest of humors yesterday. I'm in a sick house - as La-la recovers from her stereo ear infections and wheezing, the monkey has some wicked bad allergies - so bad that he's sent home from school on Monday, and DH, it turns out, has an ear infection (and upper respiritory infection) himself. I'm fighting off either a cold or bad allergies. Luckily it hasn't gotten to the completely addled, I need to sleep this off phase, and I seem to be doing better. And then - one of DH's brothers calls in a crisis asking for crazy money. Our budget is tighter than is comfortable right now, the guy is old enough that even if he didn't have the money, it shouldn't have been a 2-days-notice-crisis, and he's lucky we aren't hitting him up for the cost of his mom's care. Harrumph. Even the Internet was making me mad.

I retire to our room and begin to work on my sock. I didn't even really want to work on the sock, but my next simplest project was 2x1 ribbing, and I didn't think I was up for that. So, the sock. Stockinette Avenger. I swear to you within the first round, I was feeling better. I'm on the straightaway between the heel and toe. I got about an inch or a little more done, and man, did I feel a thousand times better.

There are so many Zen things about it: There's the meditative qualities, which the more you practice it, the easier it is to fall into, and I believe this is based on many things - the feel of the yarn and needles, watching the pattern emerge, etc.

A story for another post is how the trials and tribulations of knitting create their own Zen riddles.

I can tell you, I'm looking forward to some more meditative knitting tonight.