The Story of a Yarn Sale

Whoo, boy! did I have fun this week. My mom and I went to the Needle Emporium's annual tent sale. Here's what we bought:

Three of those are mine and the one on the right is my moms. Hey! I stayed within my budget so it's all good.

There were lots of knitters there, but I didn't remember to take any pictures until we were checking out and my mom took this one:

Looks busy, right. Well, this is after it had calmed down. Here's a busier shot over on Flickr.

This year the pricing scheme was new. In past years you paid by the bag and stuffed it as full as you could. This year, the prices were $3 for a 50g ball of yarn, $6 for 100g and there was a section of $1 odd balls.

Going into such a huge sale, a knitter has to have a strategy. Mine is to grab everything I like, and then cull. Oh, and I warned my mother before we arrived, every woman for herself. She was totally on board with that (love ya mom!). Things I culled were some alpaca in a sport weight because it's so warm and almost too drapey and some manos that I thought I'd make into a scarf. I also culled a couple skiens of Rowan Chunky Tweed because they were 100g skiens and I only wanted them for a hat.

What I bought was (with links to Ravelry):

20 skeins of Baruffa Merinos Otto
14 skiens of Rowan RYC Cashcotton DK
6 skeins of Regia Silk

The culled alpaca was replaced by these beauties:

5 huge skeins of JJ's Specialty Yarns montage collection. Should be enough for a sweater for Jim.

At this point, my mom started asking me if I wanted to leave. I think the long lines were making her nervous. Or maybe she was scared she'd buy more yarn if she stayed too long. But I said I waited all year for this I wasn't leaving yet! I wandered over to the $1 section and found a great collection of odd balls. Can't go wrong for a buck!

You had to stand in one line to be counted and then in another line to pay debit or Visa. What do you think knitters do, standing in line at a yarn sale? Grab more yarn! I found a beauty of a skein of laceweight while I was waiting:

The white is another $1 oddball and it's Kauni laceweight. I also checked out what the knitters were wearing while in line. There was a great lace cardigan made from Noro Silk Garden sock yarn. And a totally unique design of Kauni. You can glipse another cool design in this pic. I wish I'd taken pictures! But no, I was totally focused on the sale.

Mom caught a snap of me during the moment of purchase.


And after all that, you know what we did? Head over to the Needle Emporium yarn shop! I'd stayed well under budget and had enough money to buy another ball of Kauni for my sweater in progress.

So happy.... Can you tell I had fun? Oh good. Cause I did. Loads.