Have to tell you something funny...

I knew it would make a good story afterwards. The hospital I was in, also does a lot of rehab of alcoholics and addicts, so they search all your stuff when you come in. I had packed my usual array of scissors (those for paper, those for fabric, those little ones for threads, you know what I mean), my needle book with thick needles, thin needles, the ones for beading etc etc, and a box of pins, and some works-in-progress(WIPs), threads etc. (Oh and a few clothes, shampoo, soap, toothbrush.)

Contraband! Dangerous sharp objects! A depressive with sharp objects is a huge red flag. Scissors, needles and pins were all confiscated and locked away in the office. Imagine my chagrin! In one swift move most of the equipment that constitutes my identity was locked up. I MEAN, who am I without needles, pins and scissors??? (Just as well I didn't bring my iron!). The scissors I understood, but what were they thinking: Suicide by acupuncture??? I had never realised us fibre art types lived so close to the edge!

The following morning, I began to wonder how on earth I was going to work on anything. Luckily I found a NEEDLE parked in one of my WIPs. Oooooo! I looked left. I looked right. Feeling like a naughty girl I sat quietly and sewed. They didn't seemed perturbed by the fairly normal sight of someone sitting sewing. (Even WITH a needle!) So far, so good. Now all I needed was a sharp edge on which I could cut the next piece of thread...

Sharp edges are hard to come by in psychiatric institutions. You can rub the thread against various edges, but you get a horrible fuzzy end that is impossible to thread through the eye of a fine needle (most certainly not aided by the tremors caused by a new anti-depressant...)

Then I scratched again amongst the belonging they had let me keep. I'd also packed some drawing/painting materials and among them a PENCIL SHARPENER! Spread the word! This innocent little gadget is the answer for those long airplane trips where they won't let you have scissors. The little blade on a pencil sharpener, while not lethal enough to hijack planes, hold hostages, inflict suicidal damage to oneself or homicidal damage to anyone else, actually works pretty well to cut a thread!!

I was up and running. After a while I realised they weren't planning to give me back my weapons of mass destruction until I left (I guess other people might try to steal them with more evil intentions than sewing....) so I just gave up and soldiered on with my one needle and my pencil sharpener. And it worked just fine. That, of course, did a great deal for my sanity, and a pencil sharpener is a lot cheaper than seeing a psychiatrist or a psychologist, I can assure you... 'cause I did that too.

So now you know. Run off quickly to the stationers and make sure you have a little pencil sharpener just in case one of your little eccentricities turns into a raging psychosis in the night and the men in white coats come to escort you away. Or even if you just develop what they call "the common cold of psychiatry": depression.

But!
Fuzzy brain an' all, I did discover the pencil sharpener scissors! :)