Being a Knitting Nutter

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Affects your family and sometimes your other relationships. I am a Knitting Nutter (addict), a person who is constantly following people wearing designs that I do not recognise. I stop at boutiques and check out the window displays. I take photographs of garments, or stitches, or the yarns if I have the camera. It helps me to remember a new idea for something that I just might be able to create some time in the future. I can smell yarn a mile away, and I need to touch and smell yarn where ever I am, where ever I can. When I am away from home I actively hunt for a new yarn source to add to my already very substantial yarn stash. I never stop looking, or thinking, or planning, just what I shall create next, or what I can add to what I am currently creating. I never ever stop considering buying yet another ball of a yarn, or maybe another 2, or even another 10.At one time, about 15 or maybe 20 or more years ago (a very hazy memory), I worked out that I had enough yarn to knit at least 50 adult sized sweaters. I was so shocked by the quantity, and as at that time I was working full time as well - I didn't envisage ever using all the yarn. I simply stopped keeping track of my yarn quantity after that, as it may have become a personal crisis. I could have gone into a steep decline. I kept up the behaviour of an addict and ignored the growing mountains of yarn. (I have knitted more than 50 unique garments since that time - and I still have a very very substantial stash - now some is in New Zealand and some in the Netherlands).My family tolerate the idiosyncrasies now - but it was not always so. When our children were younger they learned to sniff out yarn sources and to try to interest me into going in a very different direction. They were as passionate about moving quickly away from the yarn source as I was passionate at locating it. Some of the mohairs I used back then also moulted a great deal - so when I was knitting we were all eating bits of mohair fluff as well. It was on our clothes, in our beds, in the air we breathed - it was simply everywhere. I tried keeping it in the freezer, and working in another room with the door closed. I wore knitting clothes and removed them at the door before I walked out to those meaningless tasks of cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing, eating etc that seem to demand attention - the yarn fibres still went with me. They all hated it, they hated what I was doing, or so they said. But if you want a mother and wife - you have to accept what you have, even if she is an addict. Now, if any of my family are in a new country or city - they look for yarns and purchase and send to me what they have found. Morgan has travelled a great deal and as a result he has purchased yarns for me from as far away as Norway and Finland and sent it to me in New Zealand. He and Melissa have given me birthday and Christmas gift boxes of beautiful yarns. They have learned to purchase 1 or 2 balls of 5 or 6 or more different colours of a yarn - so that I can knit with many colours in a new piece. Even John has purchased yarns in Sydney, for me when he attended courses there. I feel that my very fine madness has rubbed off on them all quite well and they wear the tragedy with great aplomb. They also will wear my hand knitted creations, which is wonderful. I have been asked, seriously asked, if my family wear my unique designs, and when I said "Yes of course they do" - I was asked - "Aren't they embarrassed and uncomfortable wearing all those colours, knitted up without a pattern - the things that you make"? - No of course not, my fine madness now encompasses us all. It is great.

 

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