Trying To Focus The Mind

Now that Spring is finally here I ought to be feeling better. The days are longer, there is now some warmth in the sun, the birds seem to be tweeting like mad, yet I am still in the doldrums.

One thing I am sure about is that there is not a seasonal factor involved in my depression. Seasonal affective disorder it is not, and yet there is a very definite pattern involved in how I cycle through the bad times and the worse times. It's birthdays and anniversaries that signal the rise and fall of my mood and no matter how hard I try to stop this happening I seem to be powerless.

I'm still having serious problems with my ability to concentrate. This means that I have not been able to read a book for weeks now, and while I am able to knit, it has to be something relatively simple otherwise I am constantly making mistakes (or dropping stitches).

One of the things that you are often taught in therapy are coping strategies. This is not something that I have ever been taught but I have often been complimented on the way that I find things to do when I am at my lowest. I have used studying, knitting, embroidery, reading, card-making and crocheting as a means of trying to occupy my mind at various times but none of them is completely effective at stopping the despair from its insidious creeping into my brain.

So, today I am knitting in an effort to stave off the negative thoughts. It's not perfect but it is helping, and I will have something useful at the end of it all. Today I am going to finish a sock and begin its pair. Having made one, I know how many rows I need to knit to complete each part of the sock and this helps to give me a focus. I have 19 rows of this first sock left to knit, and as they are rows that include a number of decreases to shape the toe, the number of stitches for each round will diminish and therefore become quicker to knit.

I am so grateful that I was taught all these old-fashioned crafts when I was young so that I have something to occupy my mind now when I need it most.

It's A Job That I Really Hate

I've spent much of today working on the Flower Garden Shawl. Most of the squares are now joined to it (11 that still need to be added) but in most cases only joined by one or two sides. This means that there are still a lot of joins to be made.

In an email earlier today, There and Back asked me when she was going to get to see some photographs of the shawl now that it is starting to take shape. The problem is that it isn't really a pretty sight at the moment so I wasn't going to take photographs of it yet. But I thought, what the heck; you might as well see what the back of it looks like because it may be a while before I have done all the finishing bits so that the front can be photographed.

There are lots of ends still to be woven in or to be trimmed and still 11 squares to be joined onto the shawl. If things go well tonight I may be able to get all those things done, then I will only have to do the border crocheting to finish the shawl completely. The joining together and the weaving in of ends is a job that I really hate. If I could just do the knitting or crocheting I would be very happy, but at the end of each project there is the finishing off to be done and that can be a real pain, sometimes taking as long or longer than the creating part of the project. But, like they say about exercise, there's no gain without pain, and so it is with my handicrafts, unless I do the parts of the project that I hate they will never be finished.

Once it is completed I will have to get someone to take a photograph of me wearing the shawl so that it can be seen in all its glory.