30 Days of Gratitude - Day 16 - My obsession

I guess I have a lot of obsessions. I sort of hate to admit it, but yeah, I'm a little obsessive-compulsive. Most of my obsessions are fairly harmless, I think. This photo illustrates two of them -- sock knitting and Vera Bradley.

I go through periods of sock knitting fever. I knit and knit, then I lay off for a few months. I love sock knitting because it's portable, and because of the cool self-patterning yarn. When I'm in one of my crazy sock knitting phases, I spend time at yarn shops and yarn websites and collect sock patterns (although I never use any patterns except my basic one). I love all the little accouterments--the tiny bamboo needles, the little stitch markers that I make, yarn snippers, the coilless safety pins I use as markers, the little pill box I keep them in. And the knitting bag that I keep all of it in.

Lately, I've been sock knitting with yarn that comes in 50 gram balls, enough for one sock, rather than the 100 gram balls I normally use. A 50 gram ball of yarn fits perfectly (along with all the aforementioned bits and pieces) in a Vera Bradley medium cosmetic bag.

Which leads into the Vera Bradley obsession. I don't think I've ever paid full price for any VB piece, but I do occasionally check on Ebay, and I get their email sale announcements. They've got such a great marketing technique--they change the patterns every season, so if you find one you like, you'd better buy everything you want in it, because it will be gone in a few months. Or else you haunt eBay for it. Right now I have everything I want in this pattern--one purse, one tote bag, one wallet, a lanyard, and the cosmetic case that I use for knitting. (Oh, and the backpack that I had such problems with on eBay. But we won't mention that. It resides in a plastic bin in the basement.)

I do know that it's crazy. But pretty harmless, I think. I'm grateful that my obsessions don't run to drugs, drinking or gambling, and that they are so easily fulfilled.

Photo: 9/16: My obsession