G. Knerd

After writing my last post about my, er, somewhat gross experiment with spinning cat hair, I realized something.  I wasn’t trying to spin cat hair because I had something I wanted to make out of it, I wasn’t doing it because it brought me joy, I wasn’t even doing it because I thought it was a good idea.

No, my only reason for doing it was, in fact, to see if I could.

The “Because I Can” phenomenon can be a good thing.  It can lead to crazy-amazing feats of knitting, like a gas station cozy.  Or a car cozy.  Or any number of guerilla knitting projects.

Of course, to some people, all of those projects are crazy too.  It’s all in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

The real problem with the “Because I Can” urge is that it leads to doing things you really don’t need or want to do, just because you can.  I’ll knit a sweater out of my dog’s fur…because I can!  I’ll knit a sock with super-weird construction and uncomfortable seams on the bottom…because I can!  I’ll spin a fiber out of things I find in the street…because I can!

None of these things are necessarily wrong, mind you.  They’re just…well, they don’t align with my values, let’s put it that way.

So getting back to the original point – the motivation behind spinning cat hair wasn’t “Oh, I can get something nifty out of this”, it was solidly a “Let’s see if I can” (little sibling to the “Because I Can” impulse).  And, frankly, I just don’t have time for that kind of thing these days.  I don’t need to do “Because I Can” projects – I’ve got plenty of real projects with real outcomes to finish.

In short, the cat “fiber” is going in the trash, along with the little bit I’d already spun up.  Sanity has returned.

Bear Kitty’s response?  “Does this mean you’ll stop interrupting my naps to brush me?  ‘Cause that was pretty annoying.  Can I go back to sleep now?”