I've been dealing with quote a lot of stress lately. Some of it comes from external sources, some from within myself (I'm sure I'm not the only one who beats themselves up for not being perfect all the time).

It sounds corny, but when I think about it, knitting (and crocheting, and spinning), have literally saved my sanity over the last couple of years, and I have a kind of sliding scale of what I can do when I'm stressed.

When I'm ok or a little bit stressed, I can knit. When I'm too stressed, I can't, but I can crochet. When I'm too stressed (or too tired to concentrate) to do both, I spin.

Normally this works really well, and accounts for the vast amount of spinning I've been doing lately, over and above what I'd do just for the love of it, but for the last couple of weeks, my wheel has been broken. The screw which holds the foot pedal post to the ball bearing worked it's way loose, and I didn't want to break it any more, so had to stop for a couple of weeks til I could figure out how to fix it.

This has left me with a bit of a hole in my therapy plan, which I've been filling with frantic crocheting, most especially this current piece, a wavy crochet wrap, using up the other 5 balls of Noro Silk Garden that I bought when I was making Lori's Clapotis.

It's kind of taken on a bit of meaning above and beyond just being a wavy wrap. Every day this week I've been crocheting furiously on the way to and from work, each stitch helping (but not entirely) distract me from the worries that have been crowding in, and as a result, it's become a bit of a monument to my need to recognise that I can't be perfect all the time, and sometimes, good enough is enough.

So although this has so many mistakes I'd be almost embarrassed to show it off to anyone who knows about crochet, I love it, because with each stitch, it helps me keep my head above water.

I'm waving, not drowning.

Honest.

(... and the wheel got fixed last night. Amazing what a little squirt of superglue can do.)