Hello, my name is Tina, and I like to do it in public. I’ll go to extraordinary lengths, including but not stopping at, buying special gear just so that I can get my freak on outside the walls of my own home. Sure, people stare, some even interrupt me to ask questions, but that’s all part of the fun! I know that not everyone shares my passion, and even most of the people who do aren’t quite so gleeful about the public exhibition of it, but in the end I feel both myself and those who watch get something out of it. Believe me when I tell you that there are few things on earth as sensuous, fulfilling, and gratifying as fondling your fiber in public.
Uhhh… let me start over again. Hello, my name is Tina, and I am an addict. Yes, it’s true. I think about yarn, about knitting and spinning, as much as the average man thinks about sex. I can reach heights of euphoria, peaks of ecstasy untold, just stepping into a well stocked yarn shop. And no, I’m not talking about a big box store with a few aisles of yarn, most of it strands of petroleum products spun into “yarn”. I’m talking about a YARN SHOP. I’m talking about wall after wall of glorious fiber, books, and tools… as far as the eye can see.
I remember the days when I would only occasionally pull out some craft or other, fiddle with it for a while, maybe even a couple of days or a week, and then throw it in a bin, most likely never to see the light of day again. As a kid, a teen, I had this vague sense need, the need to “make something”. I took every art class I could fit around such inanities as Science and Math, not particularly great at any of it, but trying to satisfy the gnawing ache to create. Nothing really did it for me, nothing really fit.
That all changed when I strayed from my crochet hook, my long term lover of 20 years and answered the siren’s song of the pointy sticks. No longer were synthetics enough, cheap and easy fix that they are, oh no. My new Mistress Knitting demanded finer fibers than that. My Mistress whispered things to me like “Merino”, “Silk”, “Angora”, and that glorious paragon of non-itchy goodness, “Alpaca”. You too, upon stroking this silken goodness, will agree that rolling around naked in it is not beyond the pale. I remember, once upon a time, when I’d actually buy clothes and jewelry with my free money. Heh. Imagine that!
My mistress is not above sharing. Soon, mere months after we found each other, the bloom still flush with new found love, she introduced me to her good friend Spinning. Mistresses Knitting and Spinning were notorious in their appetite for devotees, thinking nothing of sharing them between each other. Mistress Spinning had even more demands, good lord! One word: Qiviut. Plucked from the underbelly of the Musk Ox, crack would be cheaper. I’m still working on that one, you just give me time. It’s probably a good thing I’m a non-breeder, place me not into temptation with the selling of the first borns.
I am shameless in my obsession, positively shameless. My husband, dear heart that he is, is tolerant of my fevered fetish. He even put together the shelving in our dining room so that I might have a Wall of Wool, displayed right out in the open for all to see, floor to almost ceiling. This shrine is the object of much admiration and dare I say, pride? Yes, I am proud of my obsession, damned proud of it. And you know what? I am not alone in this. There are many, many tens of thousands of junkies, just like me, all around the world, all of us blissfully in thrall. Willing disciples we are, every one. You can find us at every single fiber festival, proudly wearing our creations, reaching out to stroke the work of others, uninhibited in our glee. We are online, the fastest growing community of bloggers in the WORLD. We are in your coffee houses and your pubs, freaking out the muggles and loving every minute of it.
In the end really, this is all about creation, truth be told. The addiction ultimately lies in watching something come from almost nothing… a puffball of woolen fiber and a wheel, or a couple of sticks and some string, and your own two hands. You finish one project and quickly start another, but only after much aching deliberation over just which one is the right one. Every holiday, every baby, another opportunity (*cough* excuse) to dive headlong into your stash, and yes that’s what it’s called – a stash, or head over to your nearest yarn store (or as we call them, suppliers). Never mind that you have hundreds of skeins of yarn at home. NEVER YOU MIND!
So, if know someone like me, I say unto you: Do not pity or fear us, we’re people too, just like you. It’s just that somewhere down the line we took a path less traveled and ended up here, deliriously content with our archaic skills and camaraderie. We’re not deviants, we’re just… different. So what if we get giddy when we come across fiber bearing barn yard animals? So what if sheep are nervous in our presence? You listen here, if society ever collapses guess who you’ll be cozying up to so you have nice warm socks and sweaters to wear, hmm? Yup, that’d be me. So be nice to the knitters in your life, and those you meet in the wild. You never know when you might need someone skilled with the pointy sticks.
