Tuesday, March 15, 2005

 

Book Whoreder


I had to spend quite a while clearing up the garden, sweeping out the carport, pulling up dandelions and cleaning windows tonight. As this was hard on my good hand (observe the swellage):




and utter murder on my bad hand (observe the destruction):




No knitting occurred today, Chéz Lapin.

No pattern sorting happened, either, however I do have pictures of yet another stash. The top drawer of my filing cabinet:




And the bottom drawer of same cabinet:




Note the small bunny on the floor to the right of the cabinet. This rabbit was knit for me by my aunt about 35 years ago, and is the only one of my stuffed animals that I have never named (apart from the raccoon, who we will not mention, for reasons best known to my lawyer).

Everyone's running about being all guilty about their yarn stash, however I will admit here and now that I'm secretly proud of it and hope, once I have cleaned this place up to the point that I can FIND it all, to post it in all of its glorious excess.

This pride will not stop me from trying to use some of it up, though, 'cause really, even I have limits. No, I do. Stop laughing.

But something I will never be ashamed of is my stash of knitting books. I'm a bibliophile. No, more than that. A bibliobsessive (yes, it's a word, I just made it up, shut up).

I love books. I love the way they look, the way they smell, the way they feel; everything about them. I learned to read before I was four years old and about 15 years ago I fulfilled a lifelong dream and purchased an entire set of The Encyclopedia Britannica (plus the Great Books of Western Literature and Five Fairly Lousy Ones that they had as an optional extra. Plus 24 cookbooks.) I freely admit that I am a complete and utter whore when it comes to books, and although I have donated hundreds (probably more like a thousand) of them to various places and people over the year, I am still overrun by books.

And that's just the way I like it. The online books and the CD-ROM books and all of that just don't do it for me. I need to hold the books and fondle them and ... um ... well, you know. Read them.

I started buying patterns on eBay when I first got all nuts about knitting and now have likely somewhere over 100 various single patterns and collections. It's amazing the vintage patterns you can get for merely pennies (the majority of the ones bought online cost me a buck or two).

After I manage to shovel out the worst of the filth in my living room, my stalker (hi Suzanne! *waves*) and I are going to spend an afternoon with a couple of bottles of dry red and spread these all out all over the room and peruse them.

We may well be the luckiest girls in the world.

Comments:
Twatzilla. You know you'd rather read Trixie Beldens with me.
 
I read that as "a full set of Encylcopedia Brown" and I was FULL of envy. One of the things I like to do is track down hard covers of my favorite childhood books to make sure I have these old friends with me forever.

And you do *not* even know what the smell of old library stacks makes me want to get up to. Heh.
 
Of the 8 bookcases in my house, the spousal unit's books occupy about one. (He also almost never rereads books, which confuses the hell out of me.) The rest are mine all mine. If I see blank wall space I tend to view it as a possible new home for a new bookcase. It's a sickness. But it's a *happy-making* sickness, right?
 
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