How is it possible that Mr S-P is having trouble relating to my crafting compulsions these days? He keeps looking at me funny every time when I show up with a different project in my hands, sometimes two or three different things every day. Over the weekend, he tried to keep the scold out of his voice when he asked whether I was going to finish the big afghan I'm making for our neighbor before I moved on to other crafts. I felt mildly chastised, but I continued to let myself bounce around between things. It only got worse from there, with new activities coming and going from my sphere of interest. The Mr has phases like this. They just don't involve yarn, that I can recall.
Around two o'clock this afternoon, I was tidying my craft room, and found an untouched skein of tan yarn that had fallen to the floor of my closet. I knew I had it, and I knew I had a nearly new one of maroon, left over from one of the Christmas presents. Without allowing myself conscious thought, I took a break from the much-needed, much-delayed craft room organization to start another wearable item. I still had the tab open on my iPad from the hat I made my daughter last month, and I sat on the end of my bed, with the TV on, making the round that forms the crown of that hat pattern. I put it down and picked it up again multiple times over the course of the night. As I write now, it is all but complete, on my head. It took me less than twelve hours to do the whole thing, although I'll wait until tomorrow to tuck in the loose ends and sew the buttons on the sides where the brim turns up. It's a little bigger than the one I made my daughter, but I like to wear my hair up in a bun more than she does, and this way I should be able to wear it in those situations. It's also a little softer, but she chose the purple and green yarn that hers is made from, and I gravitate towards the softest yarns I can get.
As I completed the hat, frantically working the single crochet rows that form the band and brim, hoping to get it done so I could go to bed, I found a way to justify in my own mind why I have to start and stop so many things, and why I'm okay with some of them never being completed. I've started reading up on some of the symptoms of functional neurological disease, and looked for myself in their descriptions. I have discovered that my problems with headaches and full-body muscle spasms are worse when my mind is zoned out, not actively working. When I get a crochet pattern down, for example, I can think less about what my hands are doing. My mind wanders and my tensions ease. You'd think this would be a positive, like meditation, and in some ways it really is. But with FND, apparently meditation is a gateway to the truly distressing ways it presents in my particular case. I have to keep tricking my mind into refocusing, and constantly switching projects is my own form of muscle confusion. It might drive my husband batty, seeing me dropping one thing suddenly and grabbing something new, without guaranteeing that the first ones will be prioritized ever again. But it's keeping me from literally hurting myself, when a bored mind starts sending pain signals in sharp bursts. I don't know about anyone else, but avoidance of pain is a pretty strong motivator. Now that the hat is done, I have a few choices: go back to the afghan for T, try to finish that sock on the loom, or look for something else entirely. You know, I have that quilt I started about four years ago...
No comments:
Post a Comment