Nature Cotton Leads to Insanity

Let me show you how. Follow me.

You want to make a scarf for that special someone. That someone who needs just the right yarn, in just the right colors, and you know just the pattern. You’ve got one skein of Patagonia Nature Cotton, in the sweetest colorway. But you know that’s not enough. So you run by the LYS where you purchased the one skein, and lo and behold she’s got 2 more in the same colorway and dye lot. You do a little happy dance, knocking over a magazine display with much grace and aplomb. LYS NaziBitch glares and charges you for 3 skeins, when you’ve only purchased 2. You point this out and she huffs as if offended. She asks if you’d like your yarn wound, but you’re in a hurry and your daughters are honking the horn in the car and besides, the LYS NaziBitch is harshing your mellow, so you decline.

That was your mistake.

When you get home and open the skeins, you notice that all 3 skeins are totally different. Same general colors, but really nothing alike. That’s okay, right? You can deal. Alternate skeins. It’s the nature of the nature cotton. (snort) It’s all good.

But it’s not. It’s not all good.

You own a yarn winder, but not a swift. When you go to wind your yarn, it becomes tangled. Not some little “oh dear, a knot, whatever shall I do” kind of tangles, but big terrible “what the fuck have I done, it’s going to eat me” kind of tangles. Not just one skein, but all three of them. Masses of knots, snags, and loops. So bad you have to resort to cutting the yarn in several places.

Your eye starts to twitch.

After 2 hours of untangling, you feel very smug and wise when you get the bright idea to alternate the skeins while winding them, since you’ll have to have dozens of knots anyway.  You make a nice, pretty, multicolored yarn cake.

You laugh maniacally. Your family glances nervously at each other.

You cast on and start to knit. The yarn is lovely, but has no give. You work through the pain while mumbling under your breath. Every time you get into  your groove, you hit a knot and have to deal with it. Knot after knot, until you swear you’re going to go postal if you hit another.

You start to rock back and forth.

Your husband sends the girls out of the room. He sets a cup of coffee very gently and quietly on the table beside you. You growl at him, and he runs. You knit. Knot and knit and knot and knit and your hands are on fire from the fucking cotton yarn and pattern mocks you with its complex simplicity.

Steam erupts from your ears.

The yarn has driven you insane. You’re now mumbling incoherently and knitting random stitches. Your dogs are wimpering on the other side of the couch. You start to count the knots. In Farsi. But you don’t know Farsi.

In the end, your husband gently removes the needles from your shaking hands, but you don’t even notice. You’re spelling k-n-o-t over and over in a quiet little voice. He takes to you to the shower, where you wake up fully clothed and dripping wet hours later.

You hope it was a dream, but it wasn’t. The scarf, the yarn, the sticks, the knots all wait for you there on the table. But you can’t look at them directly, only out of the corner of your eye. You avoid the table and pet some pretty acrylic blend.

Because the damn cotton has driven you insane.

It could happen to you!