Toil for Oil

I don't obsess about much.

I've got the same dresses I wore in college ten years ago in heavy rotation, my shoes are ridiculously sensible, and I'm lucky if I put on a little lip gloss in the morning. I check graphic novels out at the library and rent movies and we recycle all our magazines eventually (except for the cooking ones). I have very little "appointment television viewing" and hate waiting in lines for movies/concerts/lectures/events.

I guess I'm just not willing to extend myself beyond my basic creature comforts for most things out there.

Of course there's a "but".

I do knit. Like some storybook heroine that might lose her stunning beauty/be tortured/get married to the local land baron's cretinous, drooling first born son/dishonor her family ancestors if she doesn't sweatshop out a hat or two every night. There are stacks of patterns and stash yarn wide and deep enough to keep me busy well into my midlife crisis.

I stare at people on the bus who are wearing scarves. They shift uncomfortably as I try to ascertain the geneses of their accessories. So far I haven't asked if I could touch them too. Yet.

I've re-started the same sweater five times (version three or four was all the way up to armhole shaping when I decided to rip back) because it didn't feel quite right.

Somewhere between year two and year three of my knitting, I made the switch from product oriented knitting to process focused... it's the only way I can explain the near OCD frogging, re-frogging, re-re-frogging of "good enough" work and growing desire to tinker with existing patterns or chuck it all and do it my own gosh darned way.

And now I'm venturing into knitting for (almost) complete strangers. For barter! It's exciting (more knitted things, yay!) and nervewracking (what if I'm not good enogh?).

I'm making a few wintery accessories for fellow BPALers in exchange for more perfume oil blends. I guess that's really just justifying the cultivation of one obsession in order to cultivate another.

I don't obsess about much. But when two of my "worlds" collide like this? Pure heaven. It's taking all I have to keep from diving right in to sketch up patterns and play with colors while I should be doing work things.

Luckily my short list of obsessions does not include "climb the corporate ladder".