Why I Knit, Part II

It's summer, for heaven's sake, why knit when I could do this:

 Or this:

 Or this:

We started this conversation yesterday, and I promised I'd give you the balance of Sally Melville's article on why knitting is so good for you. 
Here it is:

How Knitting Can Change Your Life!

...The human brain has two hemispheres, and they serve very different purposes.  The left brain works to familiar patterns, rules, regulations, and in ways we have been taught to work.  The right brain is the place where new ideas form, where entities that don't belong together come together, where intuition rules, where time has no meaning.

We are a left-brain-dominant society.  But as life offers problems for us to solve--where the old rules and regs don't apply--we need  to get out of the dominant, full-of-rules left brain and into the more innovative, solution-advancing right brain.  And we get into the right brain by engaging in activities that are:

• physically repetitive,
• intellectually undemanding,
• visually stimulating.

Well!  This explains the wonderful place to which the mind goes when I'm knitting.  It also explains why I need time each day devoted to this kind of activity and away from the regions on our left-brain-dominant culture.

Of course, there are all sorts of activities that put us into the right brain:  running, painting, potting, skiing, crocheting, walking, weaving.  Isn't it interesting that these activities are what we think of as things we do when we aren't working?

In fact, we might get some of our best thinking done when we are engaged in these activities.  Imagine a world in which we are all expected to have hobbies--and to spend time at them regularly!
--The Knitting Experience, Book I

So, to all of you who needed that legitimacy:
Happy guilt-free, right-brain living!