{"id":2317,"date":"2011-07-07T13:34:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T13:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/?p=2317"},"modified":"2011-07-07T14:49:42","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T14:49:42","slug":"knitting-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/?p=2317","title":{"rendered":"Knitting therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I find knitting enormously soothing. When nerves are jangling, very often a little bit of therapeutic knitting can work wonders. It’s a bit like running in that respect. It keeps me busy, but unless I’m knitting Giotto<\/em> socks it doesn’t really require an awful lot of mental input and so it’s time when I can sit quietly and think and try to make sure that I keep things in perspective.<\/p>\n

The end of the school year can be a very stressful time in Switzerland – particularly if you have one of the 20% of children destined for higher things who have made it to high school or Gymnasium. Completing the Matura at one of these elite schools provides pretty much the only route to university admission. Most of the kids here leave school at 15, complete an apprenticeship and at 18 are well-qualified and possess great skills to enter the workforce. It’s a very sensible system and ensures that we have well-trained people in all works of life and almost no youth unemployment.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Back to the Gymi. \u00a0Boy, it’s tough. If I hadn’t seen it myself I wouldn’t have believed it. \u00a0It’s way beyond anything I ever went through in my academic career in England. To achieve the Matura, students have to pass in 13 academic subjects and the level is frankly, what would be considered university level in many countries. Twice a year we get a school report and if a young person is failing in more than 3 subjects at any time or can’t compensate those below grades with double the above grades, the school will declare them to be provisional. If they haven’t rectified the situation by the next report, the student will be thrown out of the school and will have difficulty getting another school to take them on. What is really scary, is how often this happens. In my daughter’s class over the last 2 years, 5 students out of 22 have been asked to leave. These weren’t lazy kids, or kids that misbehaved. They were bright students, in the top 20% of the population, who wanted to succeed and worked hard, but maybe they just weren’t that great at languages, or maths and science didn’t quite click. Or maybe their parents were sick or divorcing. It’s tough. No allowances made.<\/p>\n

So every year at this time we are sweating it out at our house. How many subjects are below? Are there any tests left that could pull a grade up? Will an oral mark cause a grade to dip below? Can the negatives be compensated with enough positives? It’s the same every year and so far it’s always turned out OK.<\/p>\n

This year it’s down to the wire.<\/p>\n

Hence the knitting.<\/p>\n

Cross your fingers for us please….and send positive vibes this way….particularly if you are a genius in maths or chemistry!<\/p>\n

Helen<\/p>\n

PS As you can see, the Otello<\/em> sleeves are coming along nicely. Try as I may however, and despite all the skills I learned on my recent photography course, I can’t manage to get the yarn colour to turn out true in the photo! (And believe me I tried!)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find knitting enormously soothing. When nerves are jangling, very often a little bit of therapeutic knitting can work wonders. It’s a bit like running in that respect. It keeps me busy, but unless I’m knitting Giotto socks it doesn’t really require an awful lot of mental input and so it’s time when I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQtrc-Bn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}