My knitting brain is in high gear. This is a good thing, because it helps me stay sane—but last night’s dreams of edge stitches and knits where there should be purls were a little much, even for someone who loves edge stitches and knits and purls.

I knit in every spare moment. It’s when I’m most content, and it’s how I shove the other parts of my life, the hard things, aside for a while. If I have this, I can deal with the résumés and the emails and the endless searching for a good job. I can deal with the stress and the distress of anything.

So I count. The numbers swirl, the calculator affirms or refutes my assumptions, and I adjust the spreadsheet again. Hundreds of stitches and a couple of dozen rows later, I can look at the knitting and relax, because I have proof that it — the maneuver, calculation, or brainstorm — worked.

And when knitting in high gear gets to be too much, I work on a hat. After all, I don’t want my brain to explode, do I?