Gingerly such packages are brought inside with due care, and very carefully they are dissected to reveal--inevitably, inexplicably, THIS:
Which, when peeled out of the rest of its wrappings, becomes something like THIS:
Yes. More yarn. 33 skeins or balls, all in pairs but the one new yarn I wanted to test as a stripe yarn before buying it for socks. Red, rust,gold, green, purple, a peculiar dark heather with flecks of blue, purple, and green and something else, purple, blue, a medium-brown heather and a dark brown heather, a deep teal heather. I had failed to see how much red yarn I had left before buying these 14 balls, but then...I really, really, REALLY like red socks. It was on sale, you see. My favorite sock yarn in my favorite red, so...I kindasorta thought I'd stock up...well...I now have enough yarn for enough pairs of red socks for a long, long time. Which is good because I've already worn out two pairs of red socks, knitted in the first year of sock-knitting and heavily worn. Then there's yarn for several pairs of socks for friends, colors chosen by them. Then there's the other colors for me. Some are heathers. Some are solid colors. Plus the yarn in boxes and bags in the middle room that will someday be the knitting and drafting room when I get it cleared up some (fond hope, growing fainter.) All the ones for me will coordinate with other colors I already have.
It's not too much yarn, really (she says, considering the other yarn in the other rooms.) Not if I keep at it. Not if I keep at it and pay no attention to the yarn ads flooding my inbox. Or ignre the fact that the cheapest yarn there (the gold) is an off color from a good manufacturer and sold at much less than the cost of the other skeins and is really pretty and completely different than its description in the online catalog. ("Dark Natural?" No, sweetums, it's a lovely golden color. More would not come amiss, you know. For stripes on other things...just a few more skeins...) No. No more. not until at least the end of the year (the yarn-desiring self is whining already and there's a LOT of yarn in this house!) It's quite doable, knitting all the yarn I have in...oh....the next twenty years or so. Some of my female relatives have lived that long.
And I'm not only a yarn addict, I'm a sock addict. If my Sekrit Planz work out, I will never have to wear commerical socks again. (Looks down at feet, whereon are green self-knit socks.)