For me, a symptom of stress is wanting to buy lots of yarn, books, fabric, fancy soap, etc. - the comfort items in my life. If I let myself, I'd have bought the yarn for that Fibonacci sweater yesterday. But the cheapest I could find the yarn was at nearly $100 for my size, and I just can't afford that right now.

Another symptom is starting a lot of knitting projects.

I've recently started:

another multidirectional diagonal scarf out of Lion Brand Magic Stripes. I've not yet decided if it's "charmingly rustic" in its appearence (I'm using the Denim colorway, which has absolutely no regular repeats and weird blotching of darker colors in the lighter colored stretches) or if it's just flat ugly. No idea of who this will go to when it's done. I don't think I want it.

yet another multidirectional scarf, begun just this morning in the 10 minutes I have between finishing breakfast and having to run out the door, made of Lion Brand Color Waves (I really need to get to a yarn shop; it's bumming me out only having Hobby Lobby and Wal-Mart to shop at). It's in a purple colorway and it's actually not so ugly. This scarf is slated for an 80+ year old friend of mine - she "won" a scarf I made for a gift exchange several years ago but had to give it back to me because she can't wear wool. Well, there ain't no wool in Color Waves and although the scarf won't be as nice and fancy as the initial one, at least it will be soft.

a prayer shawl/afghan/thing, right now unassigned but possibly for my dad if he has to go through some kind of awful treatment. (He had the MRIs on Monday, he has an appointment the end of this week to discuss them with his doctor). I spent yesterday evening after my meeting working on this, trying to calm myself down. I wound up doing nothing more complex than being able to repeat words and phrases meaningful to me as I knitted. (I'm really, really hoping this winds up going to someone other than my dad; that he's fine.). I think I slept better for having worked and prayed on it.

I'm kind of keeping panic and anxiety at bay this morning. It doesn't help that this is "that week" (I don't know what kind of cosmic joke it is that everything gets thrown at me in the week when I'm least bouncy and cheerful and able to deal with it, but it's really not funny, at least to me). I 'm having some work-related problems today; things getting on my last nerve that I shouldn't let do that. (I've decided not to go into detail about them here; never know who might be reading).

The one bright spot is that I have someone to spell me during my Saturday commitment. I may not have to be there all day, thank goodness.