Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Hey Congress: Where's my yarn bailout?

Since all parts of the financial industry seems to be finding a way to get all the money that they can possibly squeeze out of the Federal Government, and now the auto industry is not far behind, I think that my knitting personal bailout should have priority and receive special treatment from FiberFannie Mae, the loan fiber-consolidation experts.

Seriously, if people who managed to squander other peoples' money in buying a house by simply having stated their incomes on a form without any documentation whatsoever, then I freely confess the following:

1. I have bought yarn without showing any ability to pay the credit card bills within the year. My LYS (aka "my dealer") freely pushed onto me fibers and yarns with words like "silk","hand-painted" and "handspun" knowing that my ability to refuse such fibers was impaired. I was sucked into the vortex of "doesn't it feel great!"

2. The spirial soon started. I bought yarns, tools, and patterns, and began to haunt online websites like Knitty to feed the illusion that I would actually knit all the yarn that I was buying. The stash bubble began to grow.

3. My transformation into a fiber victim was twisted yet higher by the introduction of the truly seductive and seemingly innocuous website called Ravelry. Oh, yes, Jess and Casey profess to be community-minded small business owners running a start-up, but have you noticed that their mascot, Bob, never smiles? Yeah, he's the brains behind the whole operation. They provide the ability to check out patterns and ways to use any yarn in your stash, so I bought more and more yarn with the thought "I'll figure out how to use this on Ravelry." Any reason not to buy yarn was effectively and efficiently eliminated. Yarn piled higher and higher. Who needs a mortgage when one is buying yarn?

4. Since September 15th, the value of my stash has declined by over 50 percent, meaning that my fiber 401k is now in the tank. I hear from fiberconomists that it is because my sister knitters have also bought yarn that they have told me that they could not afford and do not intend to use until at least retirement. This "fiber bubble" has now burst and we spend our evenings touching Kidsilk Haze and crying, "Why, why!!!" Soon, the fiber eviction notices will come, our yarn will be sold at auction to unworthy knitters who will be taking advantage of our circumstances and we will be reduced to acrylic "pound-plus" yarn from Big-Box stores. Our knitting community will wither and die, and friends and family will be asking us to go get anti-depressants. It will not be pretty.

I therefore plead with our elected Representatives Truly, the only solution is in a yarn bailout. I need it now, but can you ask FiberFannie Mae wait 'til I finish my UFO?

4 comments:

WonderMike said...

Heh heh. May I join your PAC???

Renee said...

Heck yeah, FiberPAC it is! Will you be our lead lobbyist?

AuntieAnn said...

I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am heading down to Washington DC
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me

I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am heading for that great receiving line
When they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yessir, I'll get mi-i-i-i-i-ine.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that's priceless! And AuntieAnn's got me humming along--good to see someone else knows their Tom Paxton.