Today was my favorite knitting store's 3rd annual birthday sale. (Happy birthday Twisted Yarns!) Now every Friday if I'm not working I hang out at this store with a group of fantastic ladies. Well like I said, this store was having a huge sale. My husband asked me where I was going today and I replied, "To the crack, I mean, yarn store."
You see, I lways feel guilty buying yarn because I have a bit already. (Although from what I hear from other women, I have absolutely nothing and they all encourage me to buy lots more before I start harboring feelings of guilt about my virtually non-existant stash.) So I always feel I have to justify what I buy by having plans for whatever yarn I adopt. Then it was pointed out to me by one of those wonderful ladies at the yarn store that my little yarn habit wasn't nearly so bad as many other habits that people acquire.
Drugs are a good example. I usually on a normal, not-much-on sale week, may spend $30-$40 on yarn or accessories. That breaks down to what, $4-$7 a day? Think about the tons of people out there who have drug habits that are in the $100's a day!! Seriously, $5 a day to keep me happy in yarn?
Another example: There is a certain book I want (Victorian Lace Today). This book is referred to in my group as "knitting porn". Okay, my husband has porn. I can live with that. So why do I feel guilty about spending $20 on a knitting book that chronicles the history of lace knitting and takes patterns that are hundreds of years old and adapts them so that we may enjoy them today?
So add another $20 onto the total above for "knitting porn" and we've brought the total up to $7-$10 a day to keep me happy. And seriously, that's what it's really all about. What many non-knitters don't understand is that when I'm knitting, it's the only time in my life that you can sit accross from me while I have a long, very pointy stick in my hand without running the risk of me stabbing you in the eye with it because you are annoying the hell out of me. It keeps me from committing acts of violence against certain family members when they keep asking me the same question over and over again even though my reply of "I don't know!" never changes.
This is why knitting is so addictive. This is why I love it and why I feel guilty as hell that I "need" it to be able to function like a normal human being every day. Maybe you will see me on that show Intervention one day with my family crying and saying all I do is knit and nothing else. I'll be all disheveled from not having bathed for a week, knitting in my hand, eyes all glassy and dialated from lack of sleep. I'll have an entralac sweater in my shaky hand as I furrow my brows deep in thought trying to remember a long ago lost pattern that I refuse to buy again because I know it's somewhere. My clothes will be all dingy because you know I have no time for laundry or anything else. I'll be skinny because I don't want to take out time to eat or I forget all together. (I almost made it through that one with a straight face!! Ha Ha!!)
Yeah, that's me: drug (I mean knitting) addict extrordinare. I guess it could be worse.
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1 comment:
Good for people to know.
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