It’ll Make You Feel Good
Remember those drug awareness ads that used to be on tv in the eighties? There would be some impressionable kid trying to walk to school or something while being assailed by older kids saying, “Come on! Everybody’s doing it.” or “”It’ll make you feel good.” He runs away from them with the last phrase echoing on in his mind- “… feel good… feel good…feel good…”
Well, I’m that kid, Ravelry is the older kid hanging out on the landing, and shawl knitting is my new drug. I’m not running away, friends. It only took me like a decade to get in on the shawl bandwagon, but I’m here now and finding it difficult to concentrate on other projects. Here’s my progress on Campside, my second shawl for the Big Cozy KAL, which I only planned to knit one shawl for.
So why all the shawls? Mainly, it’s because I crave the color in the hand dyed yarns I use for them, but I also think it’s that I don’t know how long I’ll be wearing the sweater size I am currently at. I don’t want to spend all that time on something that might not fit in a month. My body has sort of freaked out the last couple of years and slowed it’s production of hormones way down. The consensus of my doctor and pharmacist is stress, stress, and more stress. But there are times when it just can’t be helped. Times like war and death. And once you do all the things you know how to do, to no longer feel stress, there’s really nothing more you can do. So the very topic of how to reduce stress becomes a stressor. So, I became a bio-identical hormone replacement guinea pig out of sheer desperation.
My cycle did straighten out and my skin cleared up. Then with some more tweaking, I got more energy. Then a few months in my skin went bananas and I gained like 15 pounds overnight. Well, ok, it was within a month. I literally woke up one morning and thought, I have nothing to wear. Where are my grandmother’s mumus when I need them?
As annoying as my experience with the bio-identical pellet has been, I don’t regret it. I was beyond exhausted before my grandfather passed away, and when he did, there was a lot to do, plus my daughter’s wedding. The hormones gave me a serious energy boost to do the things that had to be done. So, I’m thankful for that. But, I am ready to get off that crazy ride and try extreme rest and wellness to coax my body back into balance.
One more thing I feel like I should say, in case I’m giving bio-identicals a bad rap, is that I did realize a few weeks ago that I had gradually stopped eating an appropriate amount of food over the last year or so. I’d be so busy that I’d skip a meal, then two. I was discouraged because, you know- death, and so I had little appetite. Then it hit me the other day as I watched my son wolf down his supper, that I used to be a big eater. What happened? So I sat down and wrote out what I remembered eating that day and the one before. It was pathetic. Then I started thinking about how much I consume in a typical day and actually felt a little frightened. I have always believed that a person should eat when they are hungry. I may have tried elimination diets for allergy issues, but I have never tried to eat less food. I didn’t know a person could actually need to eat or sleep and not feel the normal urges to do those things. But that’s where I was. Ugh, I am ready for some sanity again.
Wow, this post got really side-tracked. I started with shawls as drugs and ended up with drugs as drugs. Aaaaanyway, I’m still going to knit up my Midwestern Knits sweaters as planned, but I have quite a few shawls in mind too:
(on ravelry, kollabora, flickr, and instagram)
There’s Britt Schmiesing’s KAL Shawl which will be perfect for a variegated Voolenvine skein I have, Whispering Pines in a Jill Draper purple, Sunwalker which I want to do in an unusually (for me) dark colorway, and Ashburn in Madtosh Dandelion. Do any of these look good to you? Let me be your dealer.
