Retail challenge

Over the last few days I have found a new challenge when it comes to shopping – I cannot purchase wool to knit with that is wrapped and not exposed to dirty fingers.  Has the ball of wool been dropped on the floor in the factory or the shop?  Did the shelf-filler wash their hands after the toilet?  Have lots of customers touched the wool?  Will the counter top at the till be clean to place my ball of wool on?  Germs, and then contaminated wool.

I’m prepared to buy more wool than I require (a bale? of wool, or a packet of 12 balls), as long as it is in protected cellophane.  I can tell you that this simple product seems impossible to find.

I’ve trawled around the usual shops likely to sell wool, starting on Sunday afternoon followed by Monday searching on-line with Amazon and Ebay, but even with their huge choice I couldn’t find chunky wool photographed in cellophane, so that I can buy it and get started on knitting a throw.  It would also appear that there aren’t any wool shops near, or in a 15 mile radius of my address after Googling this need for wool.

I have it in my head that I need to knit to distract my wondering and frustrated mind in the evenings, whilst sitting on my ‘OCD clean white sofa’.  Nothing (and definitely no one) gets to be on my sofa unless it is extremely clean – there is a 12 inch exclusion zone – even I have to change my clothes to sit on my sofa!

 

Help with my OCD

 

This is when my OCD infuriates me because I won’t settle until I’ve located wool that is wrapped.  I tell myself to let it drop, and pick up another hobby, but the bully keeps reminding me like an itch that needs to be scratched.  The message rolling over and over in my mind is “it can’t be impossible to find wool that is wrapped – picture the contentment of knitting on my sofa with clean wool that hasn’t been touched by dirty hands”.

After many hours of hunting on-line, I decide to hit the crafting sections of The Range and Hobbycraft but with no joy.  I asked in Hobbycraft last night if they have ANY wool in the storeroom that hasn’t been unpackaged and needs to be put on the huge array of shelves holding wool, but “No everything is out” I was told.  Can this really be true, or is the assistant too lazy to look.  I decide to bear all and say “I have OCD and therefore cannot buy the wool on display” but I received a blank look and no sign of compassion for my conundrum.

Now being a fussy person, I was actually looking for chunky pale green wool with flecks of pink and yellow to match my decor in the living room, but by now I would compromise my colour scheme in order to buy wool protected from the elements – is this so hard, wool, I need wool, clean protected wool of any description!

In desperation at 7.30 p.m. I try the more bizarre options for one-off offers in Poundland, and Lidl – I was amazed to see that Poundland had wool – not the colour or thickness I’d choose but “beggars can’t be choosers” as the saying goes.  However, upon asking the shop assistant I’m again told “no all the wool we have is out on display”.

I put my thinking cap on and wonder if a work-around solution to this crazy annoyance would be to buy the wool I loved in Hobbycraft (yes they actually had pale green with pastel flecks) and put it in the washing machine, in a pillowcase.  Odd I know, but I have done this in the past but because you take the paper label off from around the middle, it just goes crazy in the pillowcase and I spent hours untangling and re-rolling it into a ball.  I decided that much as I love the wool, I am very likely to buy it (being a shopoholic) and put it in a ‘safe place’ waiting to be brave, or is that daft, enough to risk the whisking up it gets in a washing machine.

Today is day three of the finding clean wool challenge and unfortunately my OCD mind hasn’t stopped berating me so I ended up mooching through drawers upon drawers of goodies I’ve stock piled over the years with crafting projects and pretty haberdashery, in the hope that I’ve some remaining wool from previous knit-feasts I’ve embarked on.

Joy upon joy, I find wool!  Each ball is individually wrapped, and then in a cellophane bag that I bought from John Lewis a few years ago – thank you John Lewis.  It may not be pale green with pink flecks, but hey isn’t a muddy grey colour a good substitute?  No clearly it isn’t, and I won’t enjoy the end product nearly as much, and it’ll play on my mind each and every hour of the project I sit knitting, and I will continue to pursue my quest to find the right wool in a protected packet because that is what OCD living is like.

If you can help me find a supplier that sells OCD friendly wool, please get in touch and put me out of this misery.

OCD Happy knitting