COnFeSsIoN

Hi, My name's Teresa Clayton, The Treadler, and I'm addicted to wool. It's been 3 days since I last used fiber. No, I admit I'm not being truthful here. There's a little bit of wool stuck to my shirt right now. (Well, this isn't true either, it's alpaca.) Anyway, it's been zero days since I last used fiber.

My story's one you've heard time and again. I was raised in a house where fiber abuse ran rampant and was subsequently normalized. (It was no big deal to see a myriad of knitting needles lying about.) As a youngster I thought everyone's mother drove like a fiend to sales and held their children hostage in yarn departments for hours as dye lots were compared, money exchanged, and great stashes of 3-ply accumulated. I remember these yarn-runs well because many of mum's skein haunts did not have public restroom facilities. Time stood still.

As a young adult it was obvious that I'd inherited this addictive gene. For the most part my siblings came away unscathed whereas I upped the ante and took it all a bit farther than my mother before me. No longer satisfied with mill-spun yarn I resorted to mixing my own concoctions. I enjoyed having control over the concentrated levels of alpaca, angora and whatever other fiber I could lay my hands on to stir into the woollen mix. Great batts of fiber! Pandora's box was then opened wide.