Confessions of a
Yarn Addict
I blame my competitiveness, although it did start out
innocently.
“Beth is going to teach me how to crochet”, my bestie,
Laura, confided one day over the phone.
“That’s nice. It will give you something to do this
winter”, I replied, then explained how my aunt once showed me how to chain
stitch more than twenty years ago – and then walked off. Hmm, I thought. That was
before google. “I think I’ll look that up”, I announced.
I promptly found a gold mine on the internet, and was
quickly sucked in, watching tutorial after tutorial. I couldn’t pull my eyes
away from all the wonderful patterns and colors. Being an artist, I discovered
my personal paradise.
I soon found myself at the fabric store visually taking
in all the colors before me. One skein of yarn became three, then seven. After
that I may have lost track of my purchases. Every morning and evening I sat on
the couch crocheting one afghan after another like a madwoman. Weeks, then months went by, as the small pile
of yarn in the corner more than tripled in size.
“What are you going to do with this one?” My husband
eyeballed yet another queen-sized afghan as he looked at the pile of them I had
accumulated on a dining room chair.
“Your nieces are getting married”, I replied without
dropping a stitch.
The yarn pile in the living room grew exponentially
that winter and we soon lost track of our chihuahua as she had burrowed beneath
it in order to keep warm.
“I think your yarn pile is moving”, my husband announced
as he walked by one day. We looked at the top of the small mountain of yarn. It
was quivering, then a round chartreuse ball that teetered on the very top of it
rolled off landing at his feet.
“I’ll do something” I promised as he rolled his eyes and
walked off.
I either had to stop going to the yarn store or find a
better place to keep it, I decided. I had to do something fast. I ended up
purchasing clear plastic bins at the hardware store. I’ll color code the bins,
I thought. That worked until I had too many of several colors. The bins were
overflowing and I needed to get more. Eventually those six bins became ten,
then twelve. I refused to buy more, just on principle. My son would
occasionally go down there just to count them to report the current total to my
husband. Large shopping bags full of yarn were then stored precariously on top
of the towering bins in the basement. My husband was afraid to walk between
them, fearful they might fall on him and he would suffocate in the basement and
not be found.
I was a full-blown addict by now, not only to the yarn
itself, but to collecting patterns, pattern books, and the act of crocheting. I
physically needed to crochet. Without a project to work on, I would sit on
the couch at night with a hook in my hand, just twitching.
“What’s going on in the basement?” my husband
demanded one day.
“Uh, nothing. What are you talking about?” I cringed,
holding my breath.
“Your yarn seems to be multiplying down there in the
dark. Is there any funny business you want to tell me about?”
Shortly after that, my son became adamant I stop buying
yarn; we were running out of room. So, naturally, I fell to plan B: sneaking it
in when no one was looking. I would take my shopping bags directly to the
basement and later bring them up as if they had already been down there. They’re
men, they’ll never notice, I told myself. The thing was, the piles and
bags were still growing and I was running out of room upstairs, also, with all
the afghans I was making.
“I need to go to the yarn store” I announced one day.
“What for?” My husband peeked over his newspaper in
alarm.
“I need more yarn.” I managed to say without blinking
this time.
“You have plenty downstairs.”
“It’s not the right shade of blue and I’m on my last skein.”
I waved the skein I had in the air.
“So, you’re telling me that in all those thirty-plus
bins of yarn down there, you don’t have another one of those skeins?”
“They might be discontinuing it”, I insisted. “If so,
I’m going to need at least ten skeins. I have this color in a few other
unfinished projects, you know.”
My husband took a good look at me and let the subject drop. Thank goodness he understood at that moment that my sanity was hanging by a single four-ply strand of yarn. He rolled his eyes and continued to read his newspaper. Had he challenged me on that, it wouldn't have been pretty. Trust me.
