Teaching Your Brain to Knit
Brainy Thing:   25:25    Behind the Redwood Curtain:   35:25 
What We Learned From Our Knitting
Catherine knit not one, but two Poncho Perfectos by The Knit Cafe Toronto for a production of Julius Caesar.   Listen to her tale.   
The pattern is no longer  available but Catherine used raveler raplib’s Pacific NW Poncho notes as a guide.   http://www.ravelry.com/projects/raplib/poncho-perfecto  She used Jenny’ super stretchy bind off
 
Margaret has been playing with a number different projects but she finished two crochet ball ornament covers.  The directions are free and are:  Joy M. Prescott's  Elegant ornaments:  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/elegant-ornaments  in #10 orange cotton thread and Teresa Richardson's Thread crochet ornament   http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/thread-crochet-ornament---christopher  The video tutorial  is  at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL0i4TTlGyM
 
Brainy Thing:  
Catherine tells us that receiving appreciation and giving appreciation fire the same parts of the brain as offering gratitude does and it does great things for our well being.  She mention the O T Tanner company, Positive Psychology Researc, Psychiatry Seven, Dr. Tard Khastan from George Mason University and Dr. Robert A Emmons, the world’s leading expert on Gratitude.  He’s at UC Davis and is the founder of the Journal of Positive Psychology.
 
Behind the Redwood Curtain:
Today Margaret Explore the Temperate Rainforest, the ecosystem of the Redwood Forest.  
 
Knitting Tip:
Seven7seven (one of our group members) gives a tip that to keep track of yarn care instruction, take a photo of it when you’re photographing the yarn to add to the Ravelry stash pages.
 
The Learn-along
The Learn-along continues.   It ends May 1.  There’s prizes and learning to be had.  
website https://teachingyourbraintoknit.com/ for show notes, photos of our knitting and crochet projects, Behind the Redwood Curtain places and things and anything else we decide to post.
 
Today on Teaching Your Brain to Knit, how you can improve your quality of life with gratitude and appreciation;  Catherine takes a journey in knitting for the theatre;  Margaret enjoys the plasticity of crochet;  We learn what a temperate rain forest is, we get a tip about how to never lose your yarn’s care instruction, and we give a reminder about the 2017 Learn along.