The in-laws are on their way back to Georgia today. It was a pleasant visit, considering the awful circumstances bringing them here. I'm very grateful that throughout this ordeal the family has managed to avoid the Jerry Springer-esque behavior that often comes forth during times of tension and tragedy. Sorority Girl and I used to call the ladies' room on the oncology floor "The Springer Show," because it wasn't unusual to walk in to find a cluster of family members all but coming to blows as they rehashed some long-held family grudges. We've all managed to remain friendly and functional, and may it continue (she says, knocking wood).


Meanwhile, Sorority Girl arrived safely yesterday afternoon, and we have planned some retail therapy breaks between nursing home trips during her visit. Between retail therapy, pay-per-view movies and knitting (for me, she doesn't knit) we should muddle through.


Someone on Knitter's Review quipped that knitting is a "gateway drug" to other addictions, like spinning and quilting. I'd just been thinking that myself - especially since a KR friend Bess is brazenly luring me into spinning and dyeing. First she sends me a skein of her lovely handspun yarn, then casually mentions that it dyes so beautifully, now she's openly threatening to put a spindle in my hands at the November Knitters Review retreat. Isn't this the fiber addict equivalent of forcibly injecting heroin? Shouldn't there be some law against leading someone into this sort of temptation?


I think the course of the addiction runs as follows - you start out with a little innocent knitting, just for fun - a little bit of acrylic from Walmart, aluminum needles, what's the harm? Then someone suggests that natural fibers give you a better knitting high, and you sample a little wool. Next you start feeling dissatisfied with the delivery system of the drug - those Walmart needles just aren't smooth enough - so you treat yourself to Addi turbos. Now knitting is starting to feel really, really satisfying, and you start buying more and more yarn and patterns and books, feeding the craving. By now you are hanging out with fellow addicts, deep in the shady underbelly of knitting addiction, and there you start hearing talk about other fiber highs - pots of dye, spindles, spinning wheels - and people are talking about yarn in terms of fleeces rather than skeins, and you start wondering what you're missing. Pretty soon you are deeply into an addiction that interferes with getting up for work in the morning, ("Must...finish...this...skein....") and your loved ones are starting to worry about the quantity of fibers stashed in your house - especially when they start finding skeins of yarn in the kitchen, the bedroom, the desk drawer at your office.... People are beginning to talk.

I refuse to touch a spindle, BESS! You will NOT lure me further into the sordid world of fiber addiction - at least not via that method. Now, if somebody sits me down at a loom....