The estate sale.

I’d rather just hit the ground running and (re)start the blog from right now, but there’s one thing worth going back and telling you about. The greatest estate sale of all time…

This summer, there was a woman (I think I have this right…) who was moving out of her late mother’s house, and the mother had owned a YARN SHOP behind the garage, so the estate sale covered everything in the house and the shop. My mom sent me the sale listing a few weeks ahead of time, and I was like… intriguing, but no. There was so much yarn, but you know it was priced for the shop, so the estate sale folks weren’t going to be letting it go for a steal.

But then it was the “last” day, and it switched to being by-the-bag. So I loaded up the kids and dragged them over an hour into Wisconsin, and it was amazing. I loved this woman’s style and her hobbies and all the amazing items she’d collected. I think we filled three big shopping totes and the big basket:

I got what felt like quite a lot of yarn, some hand-knitted items (I like a shawl / big scarf and have no desire to knit one), textiles, and all sorts of odds and ends. We got ice cream on the way home and stopped at a butterfly… tent? thing. Success!

Then the estate sale did a sneaky last-last day because there was SO MUCH YARN (and other stuff) still there. Now it was free-will donation. Take what you want, just please get rid of everything. My kids wouldn’t let me go back (they’re bossy and no fun), but my mom can’t let a Deal go by ungotten! So she went out there and filled literal giant black garbage bags with yarn. This is what she got for me:

It’s so funny to look at the amount of yarn in the first picture and think that it felt like a lot. THIS is a lot! And it doesn’t even look like as much as it really is. I had to get four new plastic storage totes to hold it all.

It’s all natural fibers, mostly wool. A lot of quite rustic, worsted-weight wool, like Briggs and Little. But there’s a little bit of everything. I’d say it’s hard to know what to do with this much yarn, but, duh, you KNIT it! I’ve spent so much time looking for patterns for specific skeins or finding patterns and then digging through the boxes to see which yarns will work with it.

Long story short, I’m not allowed to buy yarn anymore, lol! I’ve used estate sale yarn to make a couple of pairs of socks, a Halibut pullover, a bandana-scarf, and I’m working on the sleeves of an Easy-V pullover right now. I’ve prepped yarn for a Forest Keys vest and a Good Grandpa cardigan. (I also started a Mastiha cardigan, but I think that’ll be a slow burn because I need to pay attention to the stitch pattern chart, and I tend to pick up my more mindless projects first.)

A knitting friend said that I’ve achieved SABLE — stash acquired beyond life expectancy — but I say that’s only if I become a QUITTER!