Who knew a little scrapbook would lead to all this?

Published 9:00 pm Monday, July 31, 2006

I s there a 12-step group for craft-a-holics? I’m getting worried about myself.

I am spending more money on craft materials this year than I have spent on shoes. The thing is that I don’t remember being this into crafts.

I woke up, like an alcoholic after a blackout, and wondered who ordered the shelves of how-to craft books. Why was I using three different calligraphy pens and ink to write in my journal?

My journal has somehow been transformed from a place where I dump out my thoughts to a scrapbook-collage. To compose or enter anything in this journal, I need scissors, a calligraphy pen, sumi ink, three types of glue, digital photographs, watercolor paint and magazines to tear apart.

I get tired just thinking about it.

I reach for something simpler, my knitting needles. I have become a sweater maker for my 7-pound Chihuahua, Romeo. He and I wear matching sweaters, as if my Romeo actually notices.

Romeo never makes a rude comment and can work with a garment that has four sleeves. My daughter had trouble with the sweater I slaved over for her, and it cost me $70 to pay an expert knitter to fix all the problems with it.

What kind of a person would spend $70 for high-quality yarn, spend another two months working on a garment, and then pay to have it redone?

This is sort of thing that makes me think I need a treatment center. Maybe some of the glue from my three glue guns has gone to my brain.

Realizing that my knitting skills have not improved much in 16 years, I have moved on to felting. I went to one two-hour class and came home needing to clear out an entire closet to store all the dyed wool I had bought.

Actually, I only bought some of it. My girlfriend gave me a closet full of the wool from her stash. She had a basement full from her “wool days.” She made it sound like a stage of life that everyone goes through, like menopause.

She passed the stuff on to me and made me swear to her that I would never ever tell anyone that I was getting into felting.

“Promise me, you’ll never tell anyone.”

OK. I promise.

All the secrecy made me itch. She said if I broke this promise I would be given more wool than I would ever be able to felt in three lifetimes. She insisted that people are desperate to get rid of wool. Just say no, she said.

I believe her.

Her husband was pleading with me to please take more, use his truck to haul it if I needed to. Hey, buddy, the day I need a truck to haul my craft projects, someone please lock me up.

I just know that there was a time when I was into just one craft project at a time. I would work at something until I finished it and then throw it out.

While I’m OK with throwing out a completed project, my supply room is stuffed with things I can’t figure out how to get rid of. What do I do with all the rubber stamps I will never use again? I feel guilty about having spent money to buy something I could use over and over, but really, who would want to?

Pretty soon, people will ask me how I spent my summer vacation. Do I dare tell them the truth?

I just finished knitting a scarf for myself that grew so big someone asked if it was a blanket. I’m completing one for Romeo to match.

I am making a book of poems for my husband for our anniversary in September, and this has turned into a major project.

To take a break from the book of poems, I felted a pair of blue slippers that could fit an NBA star, but not anyone with a reasonable shoe size.

I’m thinking with a little sewing, maybe I could make the slippers into a purse.

Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island. Her column runs every other Tuesday in The Herald. She is a therapist and has founded two nonprofit organizations to serve homeless children. E-mail her at features@heraldnet.com.