Realized today that I need to have multiple projects going at one time. With just one project, if it gets hard or frustrating, you set it down. Now you are not knitting at all. It only took a few days before some of the things that knitting was helping to supress began to creep back. The bad thoughts, the inner critic, and the rest.

I recently started some mittens, using a smaller size yarn and needles than I’ve worked with before. The yarn is a dark blue and the stitches are sometimes hard for me to see without good light AND my strong glasses. Also with the small yarn, there are many many more stitches per inch. So measurable progress is not always easy to see. After a frustrating session with some stitches that wouldn’t do the right thing and some rework, I set it down. Over the next few days, I couldn’t quite bring myself to pick it back up. I made excuses and I began to lose interest.

Yesterday, I noticed a change. The mindful time and the calmness that persists after a good knitting session had gone. I couldn’t focus on my work and I felt like I was just spinning in place. I made the connection between this feeling and the lack of knitting as I lay in bed in the darkness, having given up on getting back to sleep.

Today, the dog and I walked the mile and a half to the yarn store and picked out some yarn that has a beautiful color and is relatively thick. Then back home and I cast on 70 stitches and started a little rib pattern (knit 1, perl 1). With the bigger yarn and needles, I had an inch of progress in a little over an hour. The timelessness of the needles and the yarn cleared my mind.

I notice two things now: the stress has unwound and the mitten project doesn’t feel so daunting. I think I will always try to have two or three projects of differeing diffulty going at a time. Sometimes I want the challenge of a hard project, and sometimes I just need to have an excuse to stop worrying about the world and to feel the yarn and clear my mind with thoughts of “knit one, wrap, perl one, wrap, knit one, ooommm”