Some Good News

A number of you have noted that last week was a hard week in terms of the news coming from around the world. Any one news item was bad enough -- rising COVID cases, the devastation in Haiti, the collapse of Afghanistan -- but all at once? It was a lot to take. I was very thankful in the face of all this bad news that I have been cultivating a practice of looking for the good and the things that bring me joy. It's something I started at the beginning of the pandemic, alongside my daily journaling. In my entry each evening, in addition to reflecting on the day, I record three things I've accomplished that day and five things that have brought me joy. I am someone who has always tended toward pessimism, so shifting my focus to find good things in every day (and they don't have to be big things, just things that made me smile or lifted my mood a bit) has improved my outlook a lot.

There are some bigger things that are making me happy this week, beyond the usual things like meeting a sweet dog on my walk or getting a visit by a butterfly in the garden. One is the fact that the Pfizer vaccine was approved by the FDA yesterday, which I hope will encourage more people to get vaccinated. The biggest thing is a resolution, of sorts, to something that has been causing me a lot of anxiety recently. You may remember that I was supposed to go back to work at the office two days a week. Last Wednesday, we had an office staff meeting (via Zoom) to discuss the logistics of the move back to the office. Part of the plan was that we'd be "hoteling," meaning almost no one would have their own dedicated office and that we'd instead reserve an office space for those days we'd be there physically. This would enable the entire staff to use a smaller physical space -- in the days before the pandemic, we had two locations. But at the meeting, a number of my coworkers expressed concern about returning. Quite a few of us have children who are still too young to be vaccinated, and one person said exactly what I was thinking: If it's been working so well for us to work remotely, why are we rushing back to being there in person when case numbers are starting to rise again? The "big boss," the head of the office, who I've always had great respect for, told us that she appreciated us sharing these concerns and while she couldn't respond to them right then and there, mainly because she needed to consult with others and didn't want to promise something she couldn't deliver, she was taking them to heart and would get back to us. On Friday morning, she sent out a response: For the time being, as long as we could complete our job duties successfully, we could continue to work remotely. That means I am not going back to the office until I'm required to! This is such a huge weight off my shoulders, and Rainbow is relieved as well because it means that I can pick her up at school every afternoon.

You know what else is making me happy? Using up scraps of yarn for a charity hat:

You saw the beginning of this hat last week, but it's grown quite a bit since then. I've completely improvised this hat but have been inspired by the construction of Ysolda's Musselburgh hat. I started with a circular cast on and increased out until I had the stitch count I wanted (128 stitches, I think?), and now I'm just knitting straight until I have the total length that I want before I decrease for the second crown. I'm holding two fingering-weight yarns together to get a roughly DK-weight gauge -- about 6 stitches per inch. One crown will be folded inside the other when it's done, so the finished hat will be a double thickness, and if the brim is folded up, it'll actually be a quadruple thickness. This has been my go-to project for while I've been in meetings or doing online training for work, and I think it will likely be finished this week. It was also what I worked on over the weekend, when Rainbow had a pre-school year get-together with some friends at a local park:

It was a hot day, but the Mister and I parked ourselves in some fold-out chairs in the shade and I worked on the hat and read a Kindle book while the girls talked and did gymnastics in the grass and took silly selfies.

I've got a bit of a crazy day tomorrow (I have an early morning dentist appointment and then a blood donation appointment late morning), but I will be back with an update on crafting and reading. I hope this week hold some good news for you!