Pricing Thrifted Yarn

Here's a small lot of thrifted yarn for which I paid $7.99, and had no competition at all for it, probably because it was such a small lot. So why did I bid on just thirteen skeins?

Unlike most thrifted yarn I've bid on or bought locally, most of the skeins had labels that I could clearly read. Figuring out the value of yarn depends on three things: condition, amount, and labels. Sometimes only one of those things matter. Since the amount of yarn in this lot is small you'd think it's not worth much, right?

Think again. These five Premier Isaac Mizrahi Craft Yarn skeins retail for $7.00 each. You're looking at $35.00 worth of yarn here (and it's stunning, too.)

The same goes for these Deborah Norville-endorsed Chunky Serenity skeins. Add another $21.00 to the lot's value.

This wool blend is particularly pricey at $16.47 a skein. In fact, expect to fight for any pure wool or wool blend yarn in a thrift auction, because they're expensive and thus highly prized.

When you don't have a label you can still estimate value, depending on your knowledge of yarn. I have pretty decent basic knowledge, and I've been educating myself on the new types and manufacturers since I got into thrifting it. Of the unlabelled yarns, the large variegated skein is a cotton blend that retails for $8.00, the two balls of crochet thread retail for $3.00 each, and even that little ball of thick/thin acrylic is probably worth $2.00.

When you add up the value of these 13 skeins, you get a total of $84.96 -- and remember, I paid $7.99 for the lot. That's a savings of $76.97.

Comments

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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