When Hobbies Go Bad

For a very long time I was a quilter.

Actually, I was an avid purchaser of fabric, quilting books, quilting magazines, a crazy-expensive sewing machine and innumerable sewing notions. Moreso than the actual making of quilts. But, you know, the collecting part of quilting kept me busy and off the streets.

Until I got a job. I mean a big-girl job. You know what I mean. A full-time, bring work home, long commute job.

Big-girl job takes up 12 hours a day to execute to completion.

Quilting projects could, should if you're doing it properly, take up 12 hours a day to really make progress on.

This leaves no time for my other three hobbies: eating, drinking and sleeping.

Obviously quilting had to go.

But I'm a fidgeter. I really do have trouble sitting still. If Hubster and I are watching a movie or a teevee program, I'm jumping up every 15 minutes to go do "something."

In order to keep Hubster and my multitasking-addicted mind happy I needed a new hobby. Which turned out to be a new old hobby: knitting.

I like to knit. Crochet scares the pants off me and I still have nightmares about macrame from my brief stint as a Girl Scout, but knitting rocks.

Aaaaand off the deep end I went into knitting. Knitting needles, knitting notions, yarn of every imaginable fiber, knitting books, knitting mags ::breath:: knitting blogs, knitting communities, et cetera ad nauseum.

So last week I wandered into my sewing room, which is now the cats' rec room because I haven't darkened it's doorway in ages, and thought, "This space could probably be put to better use as a spare bedroom."

Not that anyone ever comes to visit, but several times a year we employ a housesitter while we're out of town and I don't like strangers sleeping in my bed. Truth be told, changed sheets and blankets or not, it totally creeps me out.

So we need a spare bed. In the sewing room. The insertion of which will require some effort. Last week I began the transformation by removing a work table from the room. That freed up a wall. Then I removed an old - soon to be obsolete analog - teevee from the room. And then I started "straightening up" the two well-stocked, very healthy bookcases stocked with everything a quilter needs - except books.

Y'all. FOUR enormous garbage bags later, you couldn't tell I'd made a dent. Don't get me wrong, everything is tidy. It's always tidy. The problem with tidy is that it is deceiving. You don't really appreciate how much CRAP you've accumulated when you keep it orderly.

Holy Mother of God. Where did all this stuff come from? Seriously. I have absolutely no recollection of purchasing all this gear.

Now the knitting is creeping in. Want to take bets as to how long it'll take THAT hobby to take over the house? Although, there's nothing like having a 20 lb. cat who is addicted to yarn to keep things in check. If he gets into the knitting, it'll all be over but the vet bills.

The only thing saving me from Hubster's condemnation is the fact that HIS hobby-gone-bad is a vehicle. An entire car - his high school muscle car - in pieces all around town. The body-turned-squirrel-habitat has been parked for, oh, 15 years in his father's back garden. The seats are in our garage, bits and bobs fill boxes in the sheds of various relatives.

He's been talking about that car in present and future tense lately and it's worrying me.

"When I get the car over here."

"When I start working on the car."
"The car will fit nicely...."

I may have to return to quilting in self-defense. Or something bigger. Maybe I'll take up totem pole carving....