Addictions...

I blame Amanda.


Before I met her, I did not knit.  I had tried once, bought yarn and needles at random, got tired of it quickly, and didn't try again until years later.


When I met Amanda, I found out that she enjoyed knitting.  Once I started staying over at her apartment on weekends when I drove to Grande Prairie, I got to watch her knit.  I was enthralled.  There were times I sat and just watched her fingers move with small, precise movements while working on a pair of socks or another project.


Then she taught me to knit.  I bought a pair of needles and some neat yarn, and started working on a scarf.  She taught me to cast on, how to knit regular stitches, and off I went, gradually working through a skein of yarn, starting a second, and gradually getting the hang of things.


Later on I added a few more skeins and a second pair of needles (mostly purchased at Michael's), but they were just to experiment with.  I wanted to be able to continue to work on my scarf while playing around with other ideas.


Then the Christmas season began.  I knew all of my grandparents would be at my parent's house for Christmas with us, and I wanted to give them each something that showed I loved them all but wouldn't cause hurt feelings.


In one of Amanda's knitting books, I saw a basic ribbed scarf that I liked.  She helped me pick out some yarn, some appropriately sized needles, and I went to work.  I started the first around November 20th and finished the third one on the evening of December 23rd.  They were very well received.

I also visited Knit Picks for the first time, to order some needles for Amanda for Christmas.  But that was all I ordered.  I didn't order yarn or anything else for myself.


At that point, I was in fairly decent shape.  My yarn stash (such as it was) was limited to about 12 skeins of yarn.  There were leftovers from the scarves I made for my grandparents (which, as you've seen, I've been turning into a neat scarf for myself), the yarn for the original scarf I was making, and a few different skeins to play around with.


But then yarn and knitting got their insidious hooks into me courtesy of a yarn store in Prince George and Amanda.


While driving home from Christmas, we stopped in Prince George, and looked up local yarn stores.  It turned out there was one above a neat bookstore downtown.  So we went up to check out the store.  I found a few types of yarn I liked, and was going to get a single skein.  Amanda picked up a little more, but then offered to pay for mine, even if I grabbed two more skeins.  So I ended up with some neat blue-green silky yarn and a chunky brown-yellow-green-purple yarn.


I think that marked the start of the addiction.  Since then, we've visited yarn stores in Grande Prairie and Edmonton and spent a lot of time on Knit Picks and Blue Moon ogling various colourways.

When I was in Toronto, I walked nearly an hour and a half (round trip) to visit a yarn store Amanda had heard about and to bring back some yarn for her, and a skein of sock yarn for myself to try.


In the past few months, I've made two orders from Knit Picks for myself.  I ordered yarn from Blue Moon for Amanda's birthday, but also purchased a skein for myself.  When we went to Edmonton over the long weekend, I was just as happy to visit yarn stores as Amanda was.  I bought a few skeins of yarn, and when I was rummaging through my stash last night (since expanded to fill two big bags plus a bag for the project I'm working on) stumbled across them and thought "Wow these are cool!  I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but boy are they neat!"


I've become addicted.  Not to the knitting itself quite yet.  I'm still enjoying working on my scarf, but as you've probably noticed, I don't work on it very often or for very long when I do.  I think I'm addicted to buying yarn and thinking about the potential it has.


I spent a bunch of time on Knit Picks last night.  I already have enough yarn to drown myself in, but I was looking at their sale yarn, and new colours in yarn to make dishclothes from, and yarn I could use to make stuff for people's Christmas gifts with...




...I think I have a problem.  :-)