Skip to main content

Wisely Thrifting

This was a lot of embroidery threads that I bid on, but quickly fell out of the competition as the bids skyrocketed, ending with a winning bid of $68.77. That, in my opinion, is too much money for partially used and blemished perle threads (that's how they were described in the listing), even if you do get the rainbow of colors.

The same day I dropped out of the bidding we stopped by our local brick and mortar Goodwill, where I found a bundle of yarn, crochet hooks, knitting needles, notions, sewing thread and yes, two nice-size bags of perle and embroidery floss in a rainbow of colors -- probably twice what was being auctioned online. This kind of thing happens to me so frequently I sometimes think the universe is rewarding me for being frugal. Anyway, I paid $5.99 for the whole bundle.

My locally thrifted thread is colorful, pretty, and exactly what I wanted -- for a whole lot less than I thought I'd have to pay (and it came with all the other stuff, too.)

Sometimes people get caught up in bidding, and you have a situation like this where the winner pays retail (or more) for thrifted items. It pays to limit your bids to what you want to pay, and look for what you want in person if you have to drop out. You may get lucky like me. :)

Image credit: The first image in this post came from the auction listing at ShopGoodwill.com.

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.

Goodwill Gamble #2 Arrives

My second Goodwill gamble arrived; this is one I paid ten bucks for last month. Just inside the lid was a big roll of plastic mesh that I think is for latchhook work. In the auction listing it looked like fabric to me, so that was unexpected. Someone at the seller's end was nice enough to put a note on this pinned fabric. I'll put on my gloves before I take it out to inspect it. The embroidered green fabric turned out to be 1-1/2 yards of sequinned and three-dimensional designer fabric. I'll guess this cost somewhere between $20.00 to $30.00 a yard, and it's in pristine condition. But here's a shot of everything in the lot, which is mostly crafty odds and ends with a small amount of cotton fabrics, a large amount of synethetic fabrics, and some other surprises. The original owner of these was probably a Catholic school teacher; these beads, crosses and medallions are the kind of rosary kits for kids to make at Sunday school or Bible camp (and s...

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...