Ten on Tuesday

Ten Ways to Lighten My Mood

1. Go for a walk. I'm immeasurably lucky to live right next to conservation land with a brook running through it and trails of varying length. When it's this hot out I'd change that to going for a swim: we're also lucky to live very close to the town swimming hole (created by the simple expedient of digging a big hole in/around the brook bed and waiting for it to fill up).
   
2. Clean house. This works only if there's a finite task that I can finish within a couple of hours. If cleaning involves massive sorting and reorganizing and decisions as to what goes, what stays, and where to put the stuff that's staying, it may have the opposite of the intended effect.
   
3. Cook. I enjoy cooking if I have the time to do it. I also enjoy eating, which, depending on what I've cooked, may or may not be a good thing.
   
4. Spin, especially if it's not very goal-oriented (still haven't finished the blue roving) and I can get into the Zen of it.
   
5. Knit, preferably in company, although alone works too. Since giving and a sense of completion (see cleaning above) both give me a huge lift when I'm blue, charity squares are the perfect cheer-me-up knitting. Not that you asked, by the way, but the Pine Street Inn Knit-a-Thon is November 7.
   
6. Hang out with friends and/or family, or, if no one is around...
   
7. Hang out on Ravelry, usually in the forums, although sometimes I just gawk at what people are knitting.
   
8. Put my latest pix up on Flickr. This is especially effective if we've been to Rangeley recently: see example above.
   
9. Shop, mostly for yarn, usually online. It's safer that way: if I can actually touch the stuff I'm beyond hope.
   
10. Read blogs, of course.