Stress ball

Today was a pondering day for me. What follows occurred to me while knitting after a rather stressful day at work today.

Think of all of the daily stressors you come across in the course of a day. Traffic, running late, forgotten items, missed assignments, crabby professors/bosses/husbands, etc.

Now imagine each one of those little things is a piece of yarn. As you go through the day, imagine every scrap of yarn you stumble upon is picked up and wound into a ball. By the end of the day, you'd have a rather large ball of yarn in your hands.

What do knitters do with yarn?

Easy question: they knit it.

Knitting is a stress relief. I can picture that invisible strand of stress being carried along with my working yarn. Each bit of stress that I deal with is knit into every stitch. Those bits are worked into sweaters, socks, hats, gloves- anything. They are now outside of me and no longer press on me from within. I can look at them and decide which ones are inconsequential and which I need to take a closer look at. By the time I finish knitting for the night, the entire ball of yarn is gone.

Sheds a little light on the idea of "unwinding" after a stressful day, doesn't it?