Staying Calm and Changing Things Up

It's been raining this last week or so here in Auckland so the traffic has been a bit more maddening than normal. I'm sure I'm like a lot of people, I don't really want to experience road rage, or start my day feel crazed and upset at people squeezing in on me to get into the correct lane after overtaking everyone who has stayed in the right lane for absolutely ages. So over the last few months, I've done some different things to arrive at work cool, calm and pretty much collected.

Some time ago I read a book called "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. It really helped me to make some small changes that have made a big impact on my life without a lot of effort. One of the things I chose to do was drive a slightly different route which meant I didn't need to experience the inconsiderate drivers who don't believe in joining the queue at the back and prefer to push there way in much closer to the turn-off than they should.

You know in reality I'm pretty blessed. I only work a few days a week and only 13kms from my home which is on a peninsula so there is no really direct route for public transport. After sitting for 1 hour 13 minutes to get to work twice last week, I wanted to do something that wasn't illegal - like looking at my phone (a big No No for those of us somewhat older folks) and now have a habit of knitting at the stop lights and traffic hold-ups. I don't choose anything difficult to knit, I don't need to read a pattern or look down at my hands to see where I'm up to. I just look around me and quietly knit. I don't feel agitated that I'm sitting for such long periods in a my car wasting time, as I'm not wasting time, I'm being creative and industrious and making something lovely out of a less than lovely experience. I know that when I tell people I knit (or sometimes crochet) in the car they are quite horrified. I think they think I'm driving along knitting but my knitting is sitting very tidily in my lap all ready for the next hold-up in traffic.

On the dyeing front I've been trying out a few new colours lately. There is a very lovely 4ply Sock Yarn, called Salted Caramel which I'm finding hard to part with. I've also done a spot of dyeing using henna and coffee. I've just about got it ready to go up on the website so pop over in the next little while and check it out.

Until next time.