Obsession. People say it like it's a bad thing but, this month, I'd like to offer up a defense of the whole concept of obsession. When you think about it, where would the world be without obsessions and the obsessive people who have them? For starters, what if Europe, as a whole, hadn't been obsessed with finding a quicker, cheaper route to India? The whole Age of Exploration vanishes in a haze of placidity. No bargain spices. No Larousse Gastronomique. No Brillat-Savarin. No Jacques Pepin and Julia Child. Our stomachs would all be much the poorer if not for that six hundred year old obsession with cheap travel.

Or how about Edison? The man was obsessed with the idea of inventing things that nobody even knew they wanted. Imagine a world without that first phonograph. No records, no cassettes and no CDs. Instead of listening to Scott Joplin or Gershwin or Sinatra, we'd all be wandering around keeping ourselves amused by humming. Not a pretty thought!

Of course, obsession also brings us such inexplicable moments as climbing Everest just because it's there. Really, as if we didn't all know that already! And I suppose you could call things like flagpole sitting and stuffing college students in phone booths and VW Bugs obsessions though I generally think of them as aberrant, if relatively harmless behavior.

You may wonder why this obsession with obsession. Well, it's because I have a new one - an obsession, that is. It's absorbing my every free moment and occasionally grabbing a few not-so-free moments. I worried at first, thinking there was a danger inherent in allowing myself to be sucked in, captivated, overwhelmed. But I soon came to see that this obsession was a good obsession. Really! It's non-fattening, non-polluting and even produces a useful product.

I have become a knitter. Give me two sticks and a chunk of string and I can occupy myself for hours. Better still, give me four sticks and some string and I start knitting round and round, oblivious to the world spinning past my window. Not only am I a knitter, I am a sock knitter. And as a reward for having made it all the way to the end of my obsessive defense of obsession, here's a picture of my very first sock.