Woolly enthusiasms

I love yarn. I don't knit because I want or need another scarf. I don't knit sweaters, so there are no fashion or wardrobe motivations. I knit because I cannot resist the infinite variety of fibers, textures and colors.

When I first took up knitting in my early 20s, I had one place to buy yarn: Rose's department store in Boone, North Carolina. There was one kind of yarn to buy there: Red Heart Knitting Worsted. I remember walking back and forth along the yarn aisle, carefully considering colors and calculating how much I could afford to buy that day. It was enormous fun.

It's hard to imagine that quaint department store when I go into a yarn shop now. The choices fairly boggle the mind. Yarns are available in every imaginable fiber. You don't just get wool; you can choose from Merino, Bluefaced Leicester, Corriedale and Shetland. And that's just the sheep. Llamas, alpaca, cashmere goats, angora rabbits, bison, musk ox and yak all give up their coats (but not their lives) for the knitters.

Then there are the plants. There have always been the classics: cotton and linen. Now enterprising yarn companies (and maybe farmers) have discovered that bamboo, sugar cane, soy and corn can be spun into knitting yarns. Sometimes you wonder whether to knit it or put it in a salad.

And don't even get me started on color. Just when I think I will never need another skein of red yarn, a silk cashmere blend the color of ripe cherries leaps off the shelf as I walk by. I didn't know there were so many variations of purple (Plum Blossom, Grapevine), blue (Mood Indigo, Sapphire Trail), and even black (Shadow, Victorian Gothic).

With all those choices, who can resist just one more skein? I certainly can't.