On the road to self-improvement, it is important to be able to honestly assess one’s strengths and weaknesses.  If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever improve our lives, and overcome our foibles?

It’s never pleasant to acknowledge our faults.  (I also am not comfortable finding good qualities in myself… but that’s a problem for another day).  However, as I’m working my way through the spring cleaning of my home and myself, one glaring weakness came to light…. I have a serious problem…..a major weakness.  You might even call it an obsession.

Yarn.

I cannot resist yarn.

There, I’ve said it.  Admitting it is half the battle,so I’ve been told.  So I’ll say it once again.

I cannot resist yarn.  I crave it.  I can’t pass it in a store.

PHEW!  I’m glad I got that off my chest.

As you know, I am now 60, so we have to assume that at least half my life is over (haha) – unless I have amazing genetics about which I know nothing.

If I live another 30 years, I would have to knit nonstop to use up the stash of yarn I have at home.   I’m not talking a few bags of it.  I’m talking big rubbermaid bins… several of them… yarn in all colors and weights…. lovely stuff….

And of course, with my yarn collection I also have a sub-collection of knitting needles of every size and material.  The same with crochet hooks.  The madness just never ends…..

Sometimes as a treat, I will go to the local craft stores and just wander through the yarn department admiring the array of colors and textures.  At one point I would never have been able to leave without making a purchase, but I’ve gotten better – now when I feel my palms start to sweat, I make a beeline for the door.   A few minutes in the car breathing into a paper bag, and I’m good to go again.  I’m only at risk when there’s a sale….. my vision is blurring just thinking of it….

I learned to knit as a very young child.  It took me a while to master casting on, so my Mom would do that part for me.   But I could knit and purl with the best of them from an early age.  I could read and follow a pattern as easily as I read my Nancy Drew books.  It got to where I’d memorize the stitch sequence in the pattern so that I could knit while watching television.

I used to knit year round – I always had a couple of projects going at the same time.  I just had to be careful not to knit with angora in the summer – too delicate to hold up in the heat.

Now my knitting is hampered not only by time constraints, but by my “winter hands” – which get dry and begin cracking in early October.  They don’t recover until May.

None of that stops me from loving yarn…. craving yarn….buying yarn.

The good thing is that, for the most part, it is a harmless obsession.  The bins take up space, but that is the only real drawback as far as I can tell.

It is beginning to look like the obsession will die out with me… my children have never learned to knit or crochet… it is a lost art…

I’d better get knitting and work my way through a bin or two….. I think there’s a yarn sale at the craft store next week……