Brainy: 16:00    Behind the Redwood Curtain: 25:42   What we’re learning from our Knitting and crochet: Catherine’s comfort knitting is the Socky Slouchy Hat  by Lauren Sanchez.   She’s using a Canon Hand dye sock yarn in a deep black and periwinkle.  Lauren Sanchez  https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/socky-slouchy-hat.  And she continues her search for the best gauge to use for a potholder with the Knit Picks Dishie Twist. Margaret is also searching for comfort and returned to Arne and Carlos for their basic bird.   https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/basic-bird.  And she picked up the black bird project she tried from Nikki Figikoska’s book:   Knitted Birds.  She started it a couple of years ago but put it aside when she stuffed it and it looked more like a rat than a bird.   She was prepared to rip the whole thing out but as she began to take the stuffing out she noticed it began to look more like a bird so with a little shifting around she has a beautiful bird in a bright aqua and stellina scrap yarn.   She also discovered a list of collective nouns on the wiktionary collective https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_collective_nouns_by_subject       Brainy Thing:  Even just planning a vacation helps our brains     Destination healthy aging https://globalcoalitiononaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/destination-healthy-aging-fact-sheet_final-1.pdf  and Paul Nussbaum How to stiumulate the brain  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhWJGgkPFhsvideo Applied research and quality of life 2010   Behind the Redwood Curtain: Margaret discovered the many benefits of yhe sweet smelling intensely blue ceanothus   https://www.laspilitas.com/groups/ceanothus/california_ceanothus.html   Today in episode 115 of Teaching Your Brain to Knit we learn how to get the brain benefits of traveling, without traveling;  Margaret and Catherine report on their comfort knitting , and Margaret discovers the many benefits of the native shrub, ceanothus.   Recorded on zoom with all the vicissitudes that platform presents.   Deadline for the 2020 Potholder Swap is August 1