Great Article in Real Simple, and a crocheted beanie for the new freshman!

I thought I would start out with a picture of the beanie I just made for our son. He will be a freshman this year, and wanted a red beaning for school. Their colors are red and white, so I'm sure I will make another one in those colors! This was a very simple pattern that I found on Ravelry. It's a cotton skull cap, or makes a great chemo cap as well. Go to: yarnsandmusings For this awesome pattern! On this particular beanie I didn't do the crab stitch, but I have made these in the past and the crab stitch makes it so cool! I'm thinking that since I have SOOOO much Sugar & Cream and also Peaches & Cream yarn, I will make some as chemo caps to take to our local Cancer services.

O.K. So now onto this great article! I am way behind on reading my magazines, have no idea how that happened, maybe because my life has been so hectic this last month! More on that later. So last night I figured that I had better organize my magazines and start reading all the august issues, since I was already getting Septembers! I found this great article in Real Simple titled "10 ways to enjoy doing nothing". I was so excited to see it! 10 ways to do nothing, and enjoy it? That is so for me right now! Tom Hodgkinson has devoted his career to the art of being idle, I so love this idea, don't you? So here are a few of the ten ideas he has for having idle time...

1. Banish guilt.. He mentions that the great monks in the middle ages spent a lot of time just praying and chanting all day. He says not to feel guilty about just lolling around.

2. This one I really liked... Choose the right role models. He tells us that most of the great poets were idlers. To name a few, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Keats. For therapy, he says to carry around some works of Keats to look at from time to time. Keats wrote of "Evenings steep'd in honied indolence", doesn't that just sound like heaven?! He also mentions that Wordsworth is also a good poet to check out. "Read a few lines, then stare out the window and ponder their meaning", that sounds like some awesome idle time to me!

3. Take a nap, and he's not talking a "Power Nap", He's talking a real nap! When I can, I actually do this, power naps just make me more tired, why try to sleep for just 15 minutes?

4. Gaze at the clouds or lay in the backyard and do nothing. He mentions that this is great way to take a break from "doing". Listen to the birds and smell the different smells of summer.

So, I thought of another thing to do, crochet! If you can just crochet something so simple that you don't really need to think about it, isn't that idle time as well?

I think today I am going to take him up on some of his idle time ideas, I'm sure I will feel a world of less stress if I just take a few minutes to think about "nothing".