is this thing on?

To start, a confession: I've been back around normal, English internet services for a little over two weeks now. I've been meaning to post, I swear, but wasn't sure what to say or how to begin. Finally, I decided it didn't really matter, and that I'd better post something before school starts (on Thursday!) or I never would.

So hi. What's up? How was your summer? Eventually, hopefully, I'll post about Quebec, and the knitting that went on, and the yarn-buying that went on, and the French-speaking that went on, but not today, mostly because at the moment I'm more in the mood to get a post up than to sift through pictures.

The past couple of weeks I have, among other things, been cleaning out the stash. Don't let the time allotment fool you: my stash is not particularly large, I'm just a slow organizer, and when I'm stumped by something (in this case, "Where am I going to put all of this yarn?!!"), I tend to let it stew for a bit before going back to it. I'm pretty much finished, and I did get rid of a lot of yarn (ok, actually, the yarn is in a big bag in my front hall closet, waiting to be mailed off to Interim House). I decided to keep only the yarn I have a very specific plan for; I've found that otherwise yarn is a source of some anxiety for me.

However, I still have a bit more yarn than I really have room for in my apartment, so I've done two things: planned my Christmas knitting around what is currently in the stash, and made some rules.

I won't go into details on the Christmas knitting, since I think some of the intended recipients stop by here on occasion, but the rules are as follows:

1. Finish all Christmas knitting the stash currently has yarn for before buying new yarn for Christmas knitting the stash cannot accommodate.

2. If Christmas knitting gets extremely boring, work on a UFO.

3. Avoid Value Village at all costs.

Now, to be frank, I'm pretty sure rule three is going to get broken a lot, but it's ok, I have back up Value Village rules too:

1. I do not need any more random acrylic for the Weasley blanket.

2. Yarn may be bought only if it meets one of the following conditions:
a. it is pretty, not 100% acrylic, and enough to make a scarf
b. it is sock yarn
c. it is fabulous and doesn't meet condition a or b

The Value Village rules exist mostly because I sometimes lose all reasoning abilities in the face of a good deal; for example, the ability to determine what a good deal really is. Twelve balls of Paton's Kroy Socks for seven dollars? That's a good deal. A bag full of random yarn with questionable fiber content in dated colors? Probably not a good deal, even if it is only two dollars.

One last thing: I got my invite to Ravlery while I was in Quebec, and this past week I've finally had a chance to properly play around with it. It is every bit as great as everyone says it is, and a definite threat to my ability to not procrastinate this year. Ah well.