Always something to suck you back in.

I've been at this fibre thing for a long time. My mother taught my sister and myself to knit when I was 5 during a bout of flu, and cross stitch came the following year during another flu visitation. My mother learned early on that keeping my hands occupied was a good idea. Once we'd learned how to cross stitch, she had little minions to sew Christmas Tree ornaments for her custom cross stitch business.

I played around a bit with knitting, but pretty much was a stitchin' fiend for years.

When I was 18 and livin' in Scotland and had nothing better to do with myself (I got a lot of cross stitch done, as well as becoming an avid fan of turf horse racing, in addition to playing house-wife...I'm not good at one of these things), I decided to teach myself how to crochet. It took a little while, and lord knows I had a few "What the hell is this?" results, but I persevered. I became an absolute crochet addict, churning out afghans like there was no tomorrow, graduating to making...well, anything that was soft. (Including, but not limited to, a bong cozy for a friend, and a stuffed jellyfish.)

When I was 25 and living in L.A., I randomly worked at Michaels for a while as an event coordinator and crochet teacher. Since I was now getting paid to play with yarn (AWESOME!), I decided I should remember how to knit, too. So, I picked up some sticks and string and away I went.

Now days I'm crazy about knitting, and I have a bajillion projects on the needles at any time.

But what has been fascinating me lately has been the discovery of dyeing yarn (only with kool-aid so far, but I assure you I'll pick up some of the poisonous stuff soon) and the gift of a spinning wheel for my 30th birthday. Taking fluff and turning it into something useful (if not always beautiful) is just fantastic to me.

So, that's the brief background overview of where I'm coming from. From here on out, pictures and kvetching.