I don’t know about you, but when I’m stressed, I head straight for my needles. Knitting, that is. No intravenous drug use here, folks. I somehow managed to develop a healthy fear of needles, despite my numerous tattoos.

But no, I always turn to my knitting when I’m stressed, emotional, upset, confused, or searching for something within myself. I used to be a comfort eater, but that’s mostly because I’m a snacker and I rarely eat meals: I eat every two hours, like clockwork. So I clearly needed a better coping mechanism.

I used to be a big fan of repression, denial, and displacement. Thank you, Psychology degree, for giving the knowledge I needed to name my pathologies, it makes me feel so much better about myself on the whole [read: sarcasm].

But knitting has become this freakish way for me to sit back, concentrate, and zone out of everything else in the world that is bothering me. I love sitting down and swatching new stitch patterns or figuring out why something doesn’t look the way it should. It’s soothing, almost. I hate doing math, but knitting math is like a drug. Gauge, stitch count, size… I love it. Absolutely love it. I love making Excel formulas to calculate things.

This either makes me an addict, a nerd, or someone with a mental instability.