Defininition of a Problem

I have become an obsessive knitter, not surprising really, as all my endeavors in life are obsessive to a fault. No other hobby of mine, however, has struck such a long-term cord within me. I am a woman of many hobbies, and passionate for each in the moment. I love the act of creating and am in love with the idea of turning nothing into something. Blank pages of paper lure me with a world of stories yet to be told and pens, with their magical ink, are the keys to unlocking them. My camera holds within it the ability to freeze moments in time in a way that only I can see it. Canvas colors my soul with the endless possibilities of what beauty can be. And yarn, my precious balls of colored fiber, tug at my heart to be twisted into wearable works of art, expressions of creativity bound in faithful servitude. This yarn, this string, has grounded my chaotic obsessions some, leaving little time for anything else. No other hobby of mine, no matter how passionately I feel for it, has endured my creative compulsive need to move on to something new having scarcely finished the project at hand. No, knitting has managed to prevail... but my knitting projects, however, I fear have not been as fortunate.

I barely begin one knitting project when my brain conjures up yet another that excites and moves me so much that I am rarely able to finish a project at all. This is evident by the mounds of beautiful yarn (which routinely inspires me yet remains too special to decide on a proper project worthy of it) and countless projects at various stages of completion, their needles hanging off of them like little arms outreached and begging me to pick them up, all stuffed into tote after tote and slowly taking over my tiny living room in a sea of woolen fiber.

My toy poodle, Holly, is often jealous of my attention to yarn and needles, my wide-eyes and racing mind going through the limitless possibilities before me, sitting prudently perched in my arm chair swallowed by pattern books, supplies and yarn. She will purposefully insert herself into the epicenter of my chaos, planting on my lap and entangling herself in my precious yarn. I can only assume she does this intentionally to disrupt my flow and kindly remind me to pay attention to her at some point. She rarely scoffs at my aggravated growls to get away and leave me alone. She instead looks at me with that cute, straggly face and sad eyes that momentarily wrack me with guilt. I make myself feel better by gently telling her I'm busy and I'll cuddle with her later, though she and I both know that later rarely comes anytime soon.

Holly is not generally a vengeful dog, but there was one incident when she took her disapproval of my all-consuming hobby out on an innocent bamboo knitting needle. Chewed it right in half and smugly stuck her nose in the air when caught.

I have found that not many people understand my disorder, not even my faithful dog. Not many people understand the way hanks of silk merino yarn melts my heart let alone how I can spend hours in a yarn shop molesting their stash. Few get the compulsive need to stay up all night to finish a project while on a roll because you are so anxious to see the final product, and few understand that some things must be sacrificed to the Black Hole of Unfinished Projects in order to satiate the creative compulsion to begin anew. I stand relatively alone, running with my needles through a life I refer to as a creative disorder.