Knitting = Sanity

The sweetp family are moving house! From way way up the top of the country in a small tourist town to the south island. This is a going home journey for us. We moved up here in Jan07 on a whim and while it has been a fun adventure the pull to go back to the mainland was too strong. The weather here is lovely and the scenery and coastal lifestyle is to die for but it is a long long way from family and our support. So we are packing up and moving on down.

From a knitting perspective this is good news indeed. Moving south is moving closer to Antarctica! There will be much need for wool gloves, hats and jumpers for little girls. Ok , only a bit closer to Antarctica but there will be frosts and there is usually snow at least once a winter so considerably colder than where we are now. There will also be....LYS!! WOOT!! No more silly sewing centre with less than adequate selection of wool. So not only will I *need* to knit things there will be places to go to get supplies to knit with. It will be cold enough for little girls to wear Mummy made woollies e.g pinwheel sweater. I can also, if I feel so inclined, meet up with other knitters. AND there will be libraries, excellent ones and lots of them, and there will be up to date knitting books available. So very good indeed.

It will be great to be back in the City. I always thought living in the country = eco-living. However living here has not been great in that respect. Things are isolated and there is a lot of car travelling that has to be done for the most basic needs. 20km each way to the supermarket. There is no kerbside recycling so we collect and store and then take it all to the refuse station for recycling, which sounds like we are doing the right thing, but having to drive 15km to the dump probably negates any positives from the effort we go to recycle paper, bottles and cans. I will be looking forward to putting our recycling bin out on the kerb each week (gosh the little things that spin my wheel lol). We are also leasing our new house on a one year lease which offers a little bit of permanency and so I am going to get a compost and worm farm going. Things I have been meaning to do for ages but we were never really sure how long we would stay in this house so I kept putting off. So better from an environmental perspective as well!

Our new house is in walking distance of schools, supermarket, post office, parks and friends. I am going to love being able to walk down to the store to get milk. Something I can't do at the moment. *Everything* involves a car trip here. We are a one car family and this means for the most part I am at home with the kids and unable to walk anywhere with them. Last year it wasn't too much of an issue as I was either heavily pregnant or looking after a brand new baby and not really up to getting out and about heaps anyway. But now babyM is bigger and not sleeping half the day and I have more energy it is beginning to get me down. I do miss not being able to have spontaneous trips to the park or playground or friends house. At the moment we have a weekly outing with everything we need to do while out all crammed in and it all has to be planned to the nth degree beforehand. I am *really* looking forward to just having options to get out of the house from time to time and they will all not need a car.
And...PUBLIC TRANSPORT. Whoa have I missed that!

There are many positives about going back but all the same I will miss the lifestyle here and friends we have made. It's a shame that change has to be tinged with sadness and we have to do the hard "saying goodbye" thing.

It has a been a whirlwind few weeks. DH accepted his new job and in the space of a week we had the moving company in to quote, found a new house to rent and sold our boat. My head is spinning and as DH so eloquently put it I went "straight to panic mode". A fair assessment but to be expected when one has a few short weeks to get your house and worldly possessions cleaned and sorted. We don't have to pack but I still need to sort and tidy and this is still a huge task. Especially as I have one now-crawling baby and one "helpful" toddler . There is a lot to do, as well as cleaning, there are all those extra pre-shift jobs to do like ringing power and phone companies, taking cat to vet for jabs so he can go to cattery while we shift (sounds a simple task but not so, when you have to also manage 2 small children and you don't actually have a proper cat cage), booking travel etc etc. There are half sorted boxes all over the house and everywhere I look there is something else that needs doing. I have lists everywhere and I do panic a little as I think what needs to be done and the time left. Right now I really should be doing X Y and Z.

And then

in the midst of the chaos

there is relief.

At the end of the day I sit, pick up my needles and knit.

There is something soothing about the creative process, taking something from the chaotic to the ordered. Seeing the ideas and plans come to fruition as the needles click together. A sense of accomplishment as my FO emerges.

A time just for me. To sit. Relax. Unwind. To STOP thinking about what needs to be done and just 'do'.

I was reading theknittyvritti and she was explaining that "vrittis" are the contents of consciousness - the ongoing chatter in one's head. "Knitting itself, when it's going well, is an antidote for the vrittis. What a pleasure to be lost in the sensations of the act--the color of the yarn, the texture of the fabric, the sound of the needles softly sliding past each other"

So true. Without my daily dose of quietening the "to do" vrittis, I think I would be halfway insane by now.

Sometimes its not so much what you are making but that you are simply making

There will always be time in my day to knit a little sanity