Fortunately for my knitting, I have recuperated from my attack of stress and returned to my usual placidity. Here is Brooklyn, with the left front growing to match the back (folded).
And I won a prize! Over at Knitting Psychos, there was a contest for organizing knitting tools. 
I shared my method of organizing knitting needles with them. I put them in pencil pouches in a binder, sorted by size. This works for me because I don’t use very long straight needles. I especially like this because it keeps the different forms of each size together, so you can easily have access to circulars followed by dpns, or different lengths. I used those plastic pencil pouches you can easily find at this time of year, and wrote the size numbers directly on them.
And for this Manda is sending me the new Interweave Knits! I am childishly excited about this. If you click on that link, you will also find some free online patterns, including a stunning pair of gloves. If you, like me, have been admiring Poetry in Stitches but balking at the $40 price, you will want a copy of the colorwork chart for these gloves. It is very much in the style of Poetry in Stitches.
Further excitement chez fibermom is the completion of #2 daughter’s tie skirt. You will doubtless by now have noticed that my fall fashion prediction was correct — romantic looks are on the runways and in the fashion mags. If you are not a Victorian or Gypsy kind of girl in style, but would still like a twirly skirt, you could do worse than make yourself one of these. If you are a girl at all, of course. Guys could do a waistcoat in the same way. I don’t know what the fashion is for guys this season, though, except that pants on high school guys are still being worn with 6″ of boxers showing at the top. So I guess you have to choose your boxers very carefully.
Today #2 daughter and I are heading out on the usual round of things — 
farmers’ market, meat market, co-operative — plus haircuts. I intend to take my knitting to the hairdresser. Assuming that Toby the dog will give it up. He looks pretty comfortable here with his knitting and his mp3 player, doesn’t he?
I also have hopes of getting in some work on my Windblown Squares quilt. I may also have to break down and buy a new box of stitch markers in order to make a new start on the Lotus shawl. What’s that? I could just clean the house and probably would find the old ones? Well, yes, but you know it is August.
Wow! Now that is a beautiful skirt! I like the pencil case idea too! Right now I have all my dpns and crochet hooks in oblong cookie tins from Wal-Mart (gotta eat a lot of cookies :-)) and the kiddo’s like to rattle them! 😛 Hope you have fun at the markets!
I like the skirt and Toby still looks cute.
Agoraphobia: I take back all my doubts about your self-diagnosis. You may be right. As far as I know I have never suffered from panic attacks (Does being unable to read in an exam count – suddenly the words make no sense – that’s happened a couple of times). Just as an intellectual exercise answer me this – Does you anxiety/fear about driving on icy roads pre-date the others you mention?
That would be right – calm and placid (not sure I’d use the word placid) – except when driving 🙂 (Still feel guilty about that)
Actually I think you may have answered my question. My totally unprofessional non-clinical guess would be that the anxiety/fear about driving in winter conditions is the root anxiety – and it, in and of itself is not an irrational anxiety. I have it and I can pinpoint it in time to a drive into town after a unusually heavy snowfall which actually stayed on the road for much longer than is normal when one lives right by the sea. I had my niece in the car, we were crawling along in 2nd and we still went into a skid. I had water on one side of me, clay cliffs on the other side of me and the car started snake-sliding its merry way on an already very windy road. The Kid and I remember about 3 complete sliding curves – toward the sea, toward the bank, toward the sea, toward the bank, toward the sea and finally I managed to direct the car into a pull-in place beside the bank. That would have been about 4 years ago. My fear of winter driving conditions has increased with each year since then. (It didn’t help that I went into a skid on black ice on a hairpin bend last winter either!)
I find myself much more reluctant to drive on any road in winter now and can feel myself tensing up just thinking about it. This winter (just before taking off to hotter climes in fact) I adjusted my working hours so that I would not have to drive into work at 7.30 on frosty mornings – or even mornings that I thought might be frosty. The anxiety has generalised to wet roads (we have problems with oil slicks on our road when it is wet) and I have become hypersensitive to every small movement of the car. It is highly possible that if I don’t take back some cognitive control of these situations that I could eventually end up with the same agarophobic symptoms as yourself because, all the things you mention – appointments, shopping etc – necessitate driving somewhere (I live 14 miles from town). That was why I was asking about the timecourse – if the winter driving was the originating anxiety I can understand how it may have spread and generalised to other situations. I don’t believe I can rid myself of the perfectly rational anxiety about driving in icy winter conditions but I may be able to prevent it irrationally generalising to other situations.
placidity…interesting word for the process…