I must be insane

Last week I had a nervous yarn breakdown. I have to believe that I'm not the only person who ever had a panic attack over a little skein of beautiful yarn, so I hope someone out there will commiserate with me.

In preparation for moving, I'm trying to downsize basically everything that I have. I have some time before the impending move to I-don't-know-where, so I've been trying to find "homes" for my yarn in the form of a pattern to make from it in the near future. I have discovered that this is a postive way to spend my downtime away from needles, but can cause other problems too. Finding patterns for my yarn means I'm knitting more. Knitting more makes me want to buy more yarn, which is completely counter productive to the purpose of the exercise. Further, some of the yarn I've stashed feels so special, and so perfect...How can I possibly USE it? This was my problem last week.

I have one beautiful skein of Alchemy Bamboo in Fox Glove. It was purchase at a 50% alchemy sale, so I totally lucked out....But it's still just one skein, no matter how pretty it is. I debated trying to get more bamboo in another color and using the Fox Glove as an accent color...but again, this defeats the original purpose. I did some searching on ravelry's neat new pattern browser and came across Wendy Bernard's Dream Swatch headband pattern...Which is pretty much the ONLY thing that requires just 1 skein of Alchemy Bamboo.

So, I embrace the idea. I've just dyed my hair back to my natural Dark Brown (even if my hairdresser calls it light brown) and the Fox Glove should look pretty good as a headband. I add the pattern to my queue and print it out. I go home to wind the yarn and put it aside for knitting. And then panic sets in. What if I mess up the yarn? What if I find a better pattern later? It's so perfect in it's nice, twisted hank! What if I wind it and it gets all tangled and ruined? OMG!

I couldn't do it. I couldn't wind it. I just panicked, and my roommate (also a knitter) laughed at me.

Finally, the next day I calmed down and decided that this thing needed to be done. Yarn should be shown off, and i am not a dragon hoarding my precious gems. I wound the yarn and took pictures of the process to savor it. It's now safe in it's little plastic bag waiting to be knitted into a beautiful headband. ;)

If you're out there reading this, please tell me I'm not insane...