Yarn Haul, 2016

Hi!

This weekend was a fabulous yarn event in Portland called the Rose City Yarn Crawl, where all these awesome local yarn stores have promotions and sales and special patterns and cookies and drinks and PARTIEEEESS! I've loved knitting for about 8 year, with varying amounts of gusto depending on how much time I have, season, whether I have a knitting group, etc.

Note: nothing can ever replace my Seattle knitting group, but I've finally found a group in Portland that is near my home and full of awesome people. Yay!

Anyway, it was a good weekend in this city for yarn and I decided to do what I do instead-- ignore commercial retail establishments and head for dingy, dark basements with track lighting, collections of mason jars, and the occasional 1970's nudey magazine: ESTATE SALE HEAVEN.

I love good yarn, I really do. I love new, modern brands with ethically sourced wool, naturally dyed or not dyed at all, from rare breeds of sheep in conservation status. But do you know what else I love? 1) Old things and 2) A good deal. 

And apparently I have great luck in the basements and attics of Portland finding what makes me happy-- LOTS of old stuff. There were so many things I did NOT buy: vintage baby clothes, creepy dolls, twin bed frames with 50's decals of cats wearing party hats, baby play tables, kids' records, kids' books, every year of LIFE magazine from like 1947 onward and a modern collection of National Geographic, etc. 

I did, however, buy as much yarn as I could physically carry when stuffed into two oversized paper grocery bags that were unusually tall. 

The fabulous knitter who left behind a MASSIVE collection of yarn (truly, massive) is owed much gratitude for her hoardy ways, because it meant that I walked out with 66 skeins of yarn, 5 knitting magazines, and two children's puzzles for $10 total. Miss Knitter-- with glee from the part of my heart that cannot wait to knit a vintage fisherman's sweater pattern from vintage fisherman's yarn, thank you. 

I can't believe this is all I bought, as it was hard to leave behind entire bags of matching yarn for sweaters. Steve might regret supporting my extensive purchase when he finds the closet can't actually hold anymore yarn and that's why it's still in the living room, but it's ok, because it doesn't even need to go in the closet yet because of the requisite freeze/thaw/freeze/thaw moth treatment plan. I saw no signs of moths, but a girl's got to be careful. 

I just googled wool moth to find an upsetting picture to enrich the content of my blog and your reading experience, and now I'm going to sleep upset and worried. Goodnight!