Twists of Fate

No, not Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. I’m thinking about why I buy fiber.

And, frankly, why I buy it in such excess.

What prompted all of this Deep Thinking today? My mother is in town for a week or so to help my sister out when Papa heads back to work. She is, however, coming over to MY place Thursday-Friday and spending the night. We’ll be cleaning and maybe putting some shelves together, but that’s not actually a given.

I’m…sort of dreading it, actually. Y’all know how there are just some folks in the world who don’t understand The Stash. Nevermind that she just bought herself a ring with diamonds and blue topaz in it on a whim. In her words, “…the jewelry store was closing! !nd it was 75% off!”

Maybe if I replace “jewelry store” with “yarn store” or “fleece sale” it might work. Eh, on second thought, probably not. To her, the jewelry is functional. She wears it every day and sees it on her hand whenever she looks down.

Me? I look at these cardboard boxes that have most of my yarn and fiber still stored in them, and I imagine. I think about how awesome it would be to work with that Romney roving I sent to the processor last year. Or ponder whether leaving that Merino fleece from Australia in the warm summer sun might help with getting the grease melted enough to make it worth working on. Or thinking about how neat it would be to dye roving this year before spinning it, and wondering where the box of dyes went off to. Or thinking about how awesome it’ll be to get all my knitting books and binders with patterns in them actually unpacked and on a shelf, so I can “kit up” projects with the yarns I have. Or…well, you get my drift.

Isn’t it interesting how differently we all think? My connections to the physical world are usually my last priority. Maybe it’s because I’m in pain all the time with a variety of conditions that I noted and promptly ignored. I can’t really change them, and pain management is about the best I can do, so yes, noted, will to my best to incorporate things to help, and moving on now. Maybe it’s because I find the world a pretty harsh place, though less so than it was when I was growing up in a pretty awful household. Maybe….

Whatever the reason, I always retreat to my head and my thoughts, daydreams and the amazing, exciting wonder of possibilities. Give me some raw fiber and I can spin you a tale of about a dozen things I’d make it into, if given the chance. And if I do a lot more of that in my head than I do in the real world? What’s so wrong with that? My time, especially lately, is pretty limited when it comes to pursuing my chosen hobbies. If I end up buying (way) more than I can use, and if I can afford to do so, what the hell is the problem?

*sigh* I needed to get that out, I think, before Thursday, so I can be rational and adult about it rather than reverting to my childhood years and feeling guilty for asking for a little extra something when we really didn’t have the money for the basics, let alone the extras. Food for thought, I suppose. A sour meal, to be sure, but food for thought.

In the meantime, I’m going to go fondle some yarn or fiber and daydream. Because it’s my day, and my choice about how I use my time. Dammit.