Quick Update

Tuesday night I experienced a wonderful manic episode in which I made the living room in our house presentable to the guests who were going to be visiting on Wednesday while I was at work. As a result, we now feel we can be ready to have an actual housewarming gathering within the next couple weeks.

Wednesday night, after getting home from knitting and having the house to myself (with DH being out and social with those friends who'd visited earlier), I spent nearly an hour catching up on financial stuff that desperately needed doing. I didn't finish on Wednesday, but it sure felt good to get through so much of it.

Tonight, I finished entering all of our receipts and making sure we had records of everything my credit cards were saying we had spent. Still more work to do to reach the level of completion that makes me giddy, but I've reached happy.

I'm beginning to think that lots of stuff might actually be "put away" before our tentative housewarming (on August 8), as opposed to merely "hidden away". This makes me contentedly satisfied. :)

Now if I could just get myself organized enough that I feel like knitting again...

Considering Stash

I've decided I need a new outlook in regards to handling my stash. This whole embargo thing, while it may sound good on the surface, and may be well-intended... well, it's not really making me happy.

I've found the big problem with the embargo is that I have a whole ton of yarn taking up space that doesn't make me happy and doesn't inspire me to knit. I've only got a little yarn that inspires me. Of course, I was good with the embargo conditions, that it doesn't require me to use up my stash before restashing... but it has gotten me into a mindset that's not helping my overall feeling toward my stash.

A couple threads on Ravelry pointed me toward this article on "Slow Stashing". I've already started reviewing my stash as listed on Ravelry and moving a few more items over to the Trade page (for trades only, not for sale) that otherwise I'd be keeping in my stash simply because I didn't feel like I could ask dollar amounts that'd make the shipping cost worthwhile.

This in part came about because I just completed my first BIG trade. Or, rather, I just delivered a huge box of yarn to the post office and I expect to receive one in return in about one week's time. I'm getting rid of around 8 pounds of mostly acrylics (as well some cotton blends and one wool) that I was probably never going to get around to knitting, and getting in return a bunch of alpaca and a skein of superwash wool. Doing this made me happy in ways I never would have expected. So the ideas brought forth in the "Slow Stashing" article just made absolute perfect sense to me.

When I get home, I'm going to physically sort my stash and make sure I've got everything listed (and listed accurately) and sorted into "happy" and "unhappy". I'm also actively looking into Yarn Wanted listings, peoples' wishlists, etc, to see about re-homing some of my yarn to people more likely to appreciate it. Over the weekend I'll probably also try to look into trades (which are more complicated to get started)...

I think I'm also going to try to overcome the sweater anxiety and actually cast on a cardigan or pullover. Just have to decide which of my (already planned) projects to do... :)

Sometimes, procrastination doesn't work

I thank my husband for insisting that we work on cleaning up the back bedroom today. Even though I had found a great means of procrastinating (watching the History Channel's mini-series on the American Revolution, which my husband knows little to nothing about thanks to the British not being so keen on teaching their school children about that particular series of events).

End result: we got the table in the back bedroom completely cleared off of stuff. We even rewarded ourselves by pulling out one of our new unopened jigsaw puzzles and working it on the table. Sure we've only got the border done and some of the interior sections, but hey -- we haven't had anywhere we could work a puzzle since the move.

And we have plans to spend part of tomorrow cleaning up even more.

Our hope is to have that room be available and useful during the time that guests are in town from all over the place for our wedding celebration next month.

Oh, and related to that -- he and I have finally gotten ourselves a dance lesson to get the basics down on some steps so we won't make complete fools of ourselves. :)

And yes, I'd be asleep right now -- I even tried once tonight -- but my body's not being cooperative. And the Tums I took a bit ago haven't helped at all. oh well.