Skip to main content

Wannabut Yarn

The 9lb. yarn lot with many colors I needed that I was able to thrift for a minimum bid arrived last month. Let's see if it was worth what I paid for it.

There were 30 skeins and balls of yarn in pristine condition with no smell; a lot more than I thought I'd get when I bid on the lot (I had counted about 20 in the auction listing photo.) In keeping with my promise this year to thrift everything I can I needed some specific colors and weights of yarn for some holiday projects.

That one jumbo skein of white and metallic spakled chenille might be enough for a wreath, and costs $7.44.

It's a fun mix of bargain and expensive yarns. This striped Just Cotton costs only $1.25 per skein, and will be perfect to use for gift wrapping.

The original owner bought this pricey Opus specialty yarn on sale; it runs $6.99 per skein. I've never worked with this type of yarn but I should have enough to make a winter hat for myself.

I tracked down the price for this handpainted merino/bamboo/nylon fingering weight yarn, and it's $32.00 per skein. Not kidding. Specialty yarns from small farms like this skein are super pricey.

I have no problem pricing the rest of the skeins at $5.00 resale. Added to the figures for the skeins I've already mentioned, the lot is then worth $170.41. I paid $9.99 for it. Savings: $160.42.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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.

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...

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.