Dear Rachael,

Note: This is a true story about the perils of yarn fumes in the digital age.

Yesterday, I was bored.

So I went online, Rachael, and I looked at that pretty cardigan you're making for the Knitting Olympics. See, I'm making Uhura, and it's pretty and all, but it involves using the Patons Grace, and therefore my accomplishment will mostly involve me using the yarn and ending up with a finished product instead of me making something alarmingly complicated and time consuming.

But I want to knit something alarmingly complicated and time consuming. Also with long sleeves, so I can make it now. And then wear it.

In short, I was becoming obsessed with your project. Which happens, as we both know. It seems to happen a lot between the two of us, since we have similar body-types and we spend a lot of time together and shop at the same yarn stores. Also I think we look at our friend's activity on Ravelry a lot.

It doesn't matter how I got obsessed, though. What matters is that I am.

Obsessed, that is.

And while I have no intention of doing what we're doing with the Geodesic cardigan, which (for those of you who aren't Rachael) will end with a Stephen King-esque visual of the two of us in matching cardigans knitting and rocking in rocking chairs, looking freakishly alike with our dark hair and knitting needles. And cardigans.

Children will flee before us. Grown men will scream with their overwhelming terror. James, that could be you. Although your scream will sound better than most men would, because you are classically trained.

I do, still, plan on making Myrtle. Someday. So I bought the pattern.

In case you hadn't noticed, I went off on a tangent there involving horror-writings and a touch of horror-movie. I came back, though, when I wrote that last sentence. So, if you were to read the last two paragraphs without the tangent, it would read: "And while I have no intention of doing what we're doing with the Geodesic cardigan, I do, still, plan on making Myrtle." You may notice the alarming number of commas. I know. I like them. Leave me alone.

After I bought the pattern, I was still bored and in possession of a high-speed internet connection, so I started trolling Ravelry looking for yarn.

I love yarn.

I looked at the Louet Gem fingering weight. I looked at your yarn that you're using. It's pretty, Rachael. Really pretty. Then I looked at the yarn that the lady who wrote the pattern used, but I said to myself, "I'd rather not use that same yarn, because I kind of hate that yarn, as it annoyed me once while I was knitting a pair of socks with it," and I moved on. I told myself I wasn't going to use Malabrigo, because there were all these colors of Malabrigo that are many colors, and I wanted a semi-solid.

So I kept looking. Finally, I had kind-of decided on the Louet Gems in Dusty Rose. I figured I could go all out and get cones. Yeah. Cones of yarn.

That was the plan.

I went home. Almost dying several times along the way, and today I went back on the internet, being as bored tonight as I was last night.

I looked at people and their Myrtles. They had such pretty sweaters! I loved them all, and I really loved the fact that they were wearing them the way I wanted to wear my future Myrtle. I was so full of love that I looked at the yarns they used and clicked Malabrigo then opened Simply Socks and ordered Malabrigo sock and printed off the confirmation page and then smiled, because now I would have some of that love too, and it would be amazing.

Here it is, Rachael, Malabrigo Sock in 801 Boticelli Red . Can you imagine Myrtle in that?

The link is for the Non-Ravelers. So you can still see it.

Then I came down.

I realized that the wool fumes that convince us to spend inglorious amounts of money on bison or something called a qiviut and maybe even cashmere are equally potent through cyberspace.

I can look at pretty yarn online and be moved the way that I thought only touching yarn could move me. It's crazy. It's uncontrollable.

It could someday be a problem.

See, the people from the internet place called and said we'd get our internet upgraded on Wednesday. At that point, I will be able to look at yarn and buy it from my bed at home. This has already become a problem with books. Now it will be with yarn. I may have to get another job just for yarn.

I'm a little scared.

So, Rachael, as someone with good internet and a not-billionaire just like me, how does one manage to live in a world with access to online yarn and not have to sell off one's possessions or give up on paying one's various loans?

Does it involve self-control? Because that could be an issue.

I just wanted you to know before you saw me knitting it, Rachael, so you would know why I was knitting it. I really don't know what else I could have done, and anyway, it's too late to stop myself now.

Your friend and fellow knit-aholic,

Laura