You know you have an obsession when you have more needles than an acupuncturist

It starts off slowly at first. You don’t understand what you are letting yourself in for. You buy just one pair of solitary needles.

Unbeknown to you you have paved the slippery slope to needle obsession. In your innocence you will think these needles will be sufficient for *every* thing you want to knit. Silly, naive you. No, no. Patterns and yarn require different sized needles and there was that one little pattern you want to try out. So you buy another size needle.

But you know less about knitting and needles than you realise. You’ve bought the WRONG sized cable. Dammit. You need the 16inch cable, not the 32. Back to John Lewis you go.

That’s better. That should do. All knitting eventualities should be covered now.

Uh, apart from that other pattern you want to try which needs one teeny different sized cable…

OK, got it. Let’s go.

But then something happens. Something so overwhelming that you fear you may drown in clinking metal needles and have your eyes gouged out with bamboo stalks.

You find your Nana’s knitting needle collection and you take one pair of every size (she had at least three of every size because, like you, she had three projects on the go at once).

Then you spot an eBay job lot going and that has even more needles going in sizes you don’t have and for 99p it would be a veritable SIN to send these needles to landfill.

Then people hear you’re collecting knitting needles and BUY you a set and before long… well…

And that is not all, oh no, that is not all. And I haven’t included crochet hooks yet…

You decide you need a plan. And you are a bit of an organizing freak so all may not be lost. You think. You think hard. And you come up with a cunning device which may just save the day.

A knitting needle roll. Behold: the Behemoth…

Hm… I can see that I have no 2.5mm, 7mm or 7.5mm… I would be wrong somehow not have a complete set…. I’ll just have a wee look on eBay…

It’s OK. I control the needles. They don’t control me.