The Most Awesomiest Swap Day EVAR

Sometimes things just work out.

Mango, my friend who hosts a monthly Knitting at the Farm, couldn't host on the usual Saturday in January, so rescheduled for the last Saturday instead.  (This worked out well for me, because I was in Florida for the usual weekend and would have missed it.)  It had been a while since we'd done a swap, too, so we decided to throw that in there and make it a day.

A few days before the swap, I was looking on Ravelry (the Vermont forum) and came across a post from a woman who wanted to destash completely.  She's moving to a smaller place, doesn't even want to deal with sorting and packing, who wants it?  $200 takes the lot.  Best part?  She lives really near Mango.  I'd be there anyway, with a bunch of friends.  I sent an email to the group asking if anyone would like to split the stash with me.  Three people responded immediately that they would, so I emailed the woman who'd posted the offer and snapped it up!

Photo courtesy of Jess

Seriously, what a massive score.  I wish I'd thought to take pictures when it was all in my car: three full garbage bags, two big bins, and a couple of smaller bags... it completely filled the back of my station wagon.  We are talking a HAUL here, people.  It was a lot of yarn.  A LOT OF YARN.

Photo courtesy of Jess

The four of us sorted the yarn by size (thank goodness one of them was a librarian!) in Mango's front room.  Even once it was sorted, we are still talking about an overwhelming amount of yarn.  Jess kindly snapped a few pictures, and then we got down to the business of staking claim.  We'd put a pile of, say, fingering weight yarn in the middle of the floor, and then we'd go around in a circle and each take something until we got down to the yarn that none of us wanted.  Then we'd put aside that yarn and move on to the next pile.  We went all the way through to the chunky yarns in complete peace.  Rarely did two people feel equally passionate about how much they wanted the same skein of yarn.  There was never a disagreement or an argument.  There was a great deal of potential for fisticuffs (after all, we are talking about a room filled with yarn, free for the taking), but we all restrained ourselves.

Photo courtesy of Jess

It took about two hours to sort and divide up all that yarn.  Maybe longer.  Honestly, we were having so much fun that I didn't really pay attention to the time.  We each came away with about a garbage bag full of yarn we wanted to keep, and there was still a huge amount of yarn that none of us wanted left over.  We opened the pile to our friends who were patiently waiting (and swapping, and eating, and knitting) in the other room.  Everybody took a look and chose something to take with them.

Me taking an "I need the big picture" break while Erin sorts yarn. Photo courtesy of Jess

There was still a ton of yarn left over, so I brought it home with me and will figure out some place to donate it.  Maybe I'll go through it again and sort out things I think would be appropriate for the nearby elementary school.  Maybe I'll just take it to Goodwill.  We'll see.

After all that sorting and dividing was over, we rejoined the regular swap taking place in Mango's kitchen.  I did trade a few things, but mostly the swapping was done by the time we got in there.  I'm okay with that.

Just for comparison's sake, here's a picture of everything I brought to the swap (pre-giant-haul):

And here's a picture of what came home with me:

Imagine three *more* garbage bags full of yarn, and that'll give you an idea of how much we scored in the first place.  Seriously, we each spent $50, and we each came home with $500+ worth of yarn.  Every time I think about what was in that stash, I cannot believe the amazing deal we got.


So here's the thing: that stash was up for grabs because the woman selling it was getting a divorce.  She was moving out of the house she'd shared with her husband, and needed to make some big lifestyle changes, including shedding a lot of her possessions.  It wasn't a sad thing that they were getting a divorce: "my husband and I are actually much better friends now that we're not married to each other," she told me, standing in the driveway.  She just wanted to start over and move on, and part of that was starting over with her stash.  We found a few half-finished sweaters in the pile, and I'm guessing there could have been some painful memories wrapped up in some of that yarn.  But for the most part, she was getting a new life, and so was the yarn.  Because of her divorce, my friends and I had a wonderful afternoon of fun and reconnection and building new memories.  And she was getting a new kind of freedom in releasing the baggage (in this case, literally the garbage bags!) of that former life.  We will always have the blessing of that connection, those few minutes spent chatting outside her old house, with her dogs bounding around us, that final handshake and smile.  New life abounds, even in the midst of change and loss.  Maybe especially in the midst of change and loss.

That, my friends, is a kind of Resurrection.  Thanks be to God.

Kiki Mariko

I don't quite know how it happened. I think I must have been putting myself to sleep -- I often fall asleep thinking about future knitting projects; it's much more conducive to relaxing than thinking about work -- and I decided that what our house really needs is the Kiki Mariko rug [Rav link], in the same wacky colors as we've painted the walls. Bright yellow, bright orange, bright red. Like I said, I'm not quite sure how the idea crawled its way into my head... but it made itself at home there. It may have had something to do with the fact that the house is coooooold in the winter, and a cozy wool rug may be something of a solution.

I already had two skeins of Lamb's Pride Bulky in creme from the swap, and a partial of an orange that I eventually decided was the wrong orange (ain't that always the way?), so I hied myself to Kaleidoscope to figure out what to do with this hankering to knit a ridiculously-colored fair-isle rug for my living room.

What I got did end up matching the walls perfectly, which makes me wonder: why the heck did I pick those crazy colors for my house? I like them a lot! I love my crazy-colored house! My yellow room makes me so happy! My red room is so cozy and comforting! My orange room... well, the orange looks really awesome with the red and the yellow, and I normally detest orange, but not in this case. And I do spend most of my time there, I'd say. But together? In the living room? (that's the orange one) This rug may end up being too much.

Actually, if it's horrible, or a bad size, Kiki will live in the yellow room, which is my office. There, the rug will be slightly less in the full-on pattern of traffic (and public eye), but still serve the warmth function quite nicely. I will be very appreciative on freezing February nights when I'm up writing my sermon.

I do kind of wish I'd forgone the black, or chosen brown instead -- I really had myself convinced that I needed another neutral, but now I'm not so sure it was necessary. The truth will reveal itself in the final product, after it's felted. I don't dislike it so much that I want to take the trouble of undoing all my work.

Anyway, after just a month of knitting (and the labyrinth rug has been a couple of years and I'm only halfway!) I'm pretty close to where I want to be. I think I want to knit the tube about 7' long, and I've probably got about 5' now. (My hope is that the length will be around 5 1/2 feet when its felted.) It's been a satisfyingly quick TV-knitting project, good for the end of a long day. And great for getting used to stranded knitting. I've really gotten the hang of the tension in my left hand, and my speed with two colors is almost what it is with just one. All in all, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself with this one.

Intrepid Reporter

Last month (Palm Sunday, in fact), about ten of us gathered at my friend Mango's house for a yarn swap. It was a fun swap -- all good folks, all with good quality yarn to swap. We ate a light appetizer-y dinner and drank just enough wine that our eyesight and judgment were questionable, which makes the swap that much more interesting. And then we got down to the serious business that is The Yarn Swap.

There was so much yarn there that it wouldn't all fit in one picture (or two, for that matter, but I'm self-editing for the moment):

I was Baa Baa Black Sheep: I brought three bags full! And I came home with three bags full, as well (including a bag of sock yarn to give to a semi-homebound church member who knits socks for charity) -- half new-to-me, half the stuff I'd brought in the first place. Pretty successful, I'd say.

So much fun. And swapping definitely curbed the impulse to purchase more yarn for a while! I even got some yarn for which I have definite plans... something I rarely do when I go to a real live yarn store. Thanks for a great evening, Mango and friends!