As times go by...

On monday-evening I was so fed up knitting big items such as my Daniel (the weather is too nice to knit warm and wooly items) that I decided to go back to one of my favourite items to knit which are.... socks. Found my lovely Pale Bleu and Green bamboo/wool yarn from Easy Knits in my stash (bought it last year at the IKnit show in London)and with his pattern the Diamond Geezer off I went. They come out nice and I immediatly ordered the Rhubarb colour which hopefully arrives this week. I love to knit socks and my husband has now a big collection of my handknitted socks in the most amazing colours. My own collection is (so sad) partly eaten up by some moths (due to an old sheepskin somewhere laying behind: partytime overthere for all moths living in our house) and the rest I have to mend (Make do and Mend as mentioned in the wonderfull podcast from Brenday Dayne: Cast on). But those new ones will be worn proudly this spring and summer. Knitting socks is such a technical way of knitting and I guess that that is 1 of the reasons why a lot of men like to knit socks. There is a great variation in how to knit but my favourite is top down. I know, I know.... toe- up knitting is done a lot these days and I have done a few pairs that way but in a way I stick to the old-fashioned way. Knitting always calms me down. I remember having a rather emotional coaching day from my work and in the break I knitted to calm down and that brought everything more in the right perspective. To calm down.... My personal life situation is not always easy those days. Bram has had a major and dangerous operation last year and we expected that everything would become fine and that his mobility problem would be solved. But that unfortunatly didn't happen. Walking is still a problem and the long walks we used to make togheter are not possible at this moment. So anger, pain and sadness appeared for the both of us. How to cope with this? How to place everything in the right perspective? Yes, we have a big age difference and those things appear when you get older but on the other hand not everyone who gets older gets this walkingproblem. For a few months last autum I was out of balance and so was Bram. Not a single moment in all the 26 years we are now together have I thought about those things which can happen to all of us suddenly in life. One day you are fine and the other day everything has turned the other way round and you have to deal with it. I decided to take my life in my own control and I did start meditation last november and that is not the most easiest thing to do for my busy mind. Just to sit is not an easy thing to do for me. I remember that at the first evening of the Mindfullness-course we had to sit for 5 minutes and already after 1 minute my mind immediately came up telling me what a stupid idea this was and for what reason and.... pain in my back... I don't want to do this....I want to sit on the couch and watch the tele... etc. etc. etc. But...practising has learned me to have a look at those pop-ups and go back to my breathing... It is not always that it calms down but the 15 minutes I meditate almost every day is also attention to myself which I feel is doing good to me. The first time I noticed silence was so scary for me that I immeditaly left that stage but now I love to go into my own silence and find it comforting. My -and our- life has changed dramatically the last 2 years but we are determined to make the most of it. Famous? Me?? On Monday when I came to work I heared that I will appear in a Dutch tv program. Cant tell you more right now, sorry!! But this morning Evelien gave me -with a very big smile- this embroided button with the text : "Almost Famous Dutchy" But now: time to knit while the sun is shining...