Aluminium Foil Helmet Anyone?

I was listening to the Lime and Violet podcast, when I heard something disturbing. That something was bemoaning the fact that it was March and Violet had not started her Christmas knitting. The phrase that ran through my head was, “Please shoot me now!”

The sad part was that I have been in the planning stages of the Christmas knitting. I have been pulling out the sock yarn for the Christmas socks. I have looked through my patterns to find some dainty sock patterns. I have also identified the stash yarn that would be perfect for mitts. This is sick.

There are times in my life that I am forced to confront the reality that I probably suffer from a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder. This is not a revelation to those who know me well. What is further not a revelation is what it has taken scientists years to unravel – OCD runs in families. Really? Because without them telling me that I would have never realized that one of my grandmothers has it, one of my parents has it and maybe that is why I have it.

One of the reasons knitting appeals to me is that knitting actually enjoys it when you are OCD. Knitting loves it when you can’t stop working on a project. Knitting loves it when you just have to have one more set of DPN’s to knit socks with. Knitting loves it when you see yarn and although you have enough sock yarn to guard against the coming apocalypse and the following ice age, you just have to have that one skein of Indie dyed sock yarn.

Unfortunately for me, Knitting has an evil cousin, Spinning. Before I started spinning, I did not believe that there could actually be an activity more obsessive than me on a knitting jag. I was so horribly wrong. Spinning is worse. Spinning is deceptively easy. Spinning is deceptively meditative. Spinning has special mind control powers. I crap thee not.

I can sit at the wheel and spin up three or four bobbins of singles without coming up for air or a potty. Knitting has the whole start and stop thing at the beginning and ending of the row that has a tendency to break its mind control powers and allow your body to say, “Hey! You have been knitting for a couple of hours and you aren’t wearing Depends.”

I can disclose this because recently I realized that for all of these reasons, my wheel scares me. The dudes who wrote down the Sleeping Beauty tale got it all wrong. Sleeping Beauty didn’t sleep because she pricked her hand on a spindle. No. Sleeping Beauty actually went into a coma because her spinning wheel hypnotized her into a three week non-stop marathon of spinning. The only way her brain figured it could save itself was to shut down and try to reboot. It took Sleeping Beauty’s brain 100 years to overcome the power of wheel.

What I find even more frightening is that the spinning wheel has enthralled several of my dear, dear knit friends. I fear that knit night will become spinning night. All conversation will cease as we sit like automatons in front of our wheels churning out yarn that we will never have time to knit because we are SPINNING!

I must keep the knitting mojo strong in me to fight the pull of the wheel. I must warn the others to take proper precautions. Does aluminum foil or dark sunglasses work better to block the wheel’s mind control?