The other day, when I should have been crocheting, I was instead reading a blog post at the New York Times online: How the Hum of a Coffee Shop Can Boost Creativity.

Research shows that quiet is not the ideal atmosphere for doing creative work. Instead, the noises of a coffee shop are a much better approximation of what the brain needs to function at an optimum level for creative creative endeavors. So today, in an attempt to jump start my work on the “Put a cookie on it” prayer shawl and cloche, I opened a tab on my computer and went to Coffitivity.com.

The brain child of Justin Kauszler and Ace Callwood, Coffitivity brings the noises of the coffee shop to your computer, and if my experience this afternoon is any indication, it does help.

One of the tasks I had to complete was to remove these cookies that I had appliquéd onto the “Put a cookie on it” shawl:

While they were sufficiently adorable and suggestive of cookies, they lacked the drape necessary for the shawl.

I set myself up at the table I think of as my outdoor office, and in short order, I had all of the cookies removed:

The ambient coffee house noises brought to me courtesy of Coffitivity seemed to have helped me stay focused on the task.

With the cookies removed from this project (and put safely away for some other project some other day), I finished a few of the newer, more drapeable cookies that are replacing them and got this photo when the cookies were completed but not yet appliquéd:

Having made all of the progress I could reasonably expect to make on the shawl, I then turned my attention to the “Put a cookie on it” cloche which was just four cookies shy of what is needed to complete the project at the time I took this photograph:

As for tomorrow, I will probably pack up my crochet and go out into the field and visit a coffee shop I(n) R(eal) L(ife).