A Yarn of a Tale

Posted by Cynical Sarah on August 26, 2006

This weekend I made the ultimate sacrifice. I donated. Not blood. Not an organ. Not even money, but something that was very valuable to me. I gave away three large garbage bags full of yarn.

You can laugh all you want at my overdramatic reaction to donating yarn, but perhaps you aren’t familiar with my bargain hunting, pack rat ways.

I’ve tried to renounce my pack rat ways somewhat. When I figured out that I was going to move to Canada, I forced myself to whittle away at my collection of stuff and try to get down to the bare minimum. It turns out the bare minimum includes most of a stuffed animal collection, large amounts of knickknacks and candles, pictures, books, kitchen stuff and more.

But, I have to say, I’m pretty proud of the stack of boxes I ended up with even with all that. Aside from the clothes that shipped ahead of time, everything else could be loaded into the smallest trailer that U-haul has to offer. Pretty impressive after having fully furnished and decorated a house.

One of the things that didn’t make the cut list though was all my craft stuff. I have a lot of fun with little projects like jewelry making and sewing. One of the more recent things I’ve picked up is crocheting. My hubby bought me a ball of yarn, a crochet hook and a beginner’s book for Christmas one year and I’ve been “hooked” ever since. (Pun fully intended.)

The thing about crocheting, or any crafty hobby really, is that it can be so darn expensive to do anything. It’s especially expensive when you’re a beginner and you’re just doing stuff for fun and have no idea what you’re going to do with all your little projects once you’re done with them. So my goal has always been to find supplies as cheaply as possible so that I can do my random, totally useless projects with as little impact to my wallet as possible.

I literally hit the yarn jackpot earlier this year when my sister-in-law called me and asked if I wanted some yarn. She works in a big storage facility and someone had a lot of yarn they were just going to throw out if nobody else wanted it. I found out that “a lot” was really a huge amount when I went to pick it up. I’m a public transit user, so I ended up making two trips to get it all. But, I couldn’t just pick and choose what colors I might like when I knew the rest would just be thrown away.

Most of it ended up just sitting in storage. Well, sitting in my living room, then crammed mostly into a closet and under a desk to get it out of the way, and a few large skeins in the living room where I would actually work now and again on a project. After several months though, I finally came to the sad realization that I was never going to use most of that yarn. I’d barely made a dent in it working on some squares for an afghan, and after I started working, I haven’t done anything with that even.

I gave in and started advertising to get rid of it. Being the smart entrepreneur that I am, I put it on Craigslist.org for about $5 per large bag – still a steal if you know anything about yarn. I was practically giving it away, and I ended up giving it totally away anyway.

I got an email from a lady who works in a group home who was looking for inexpensive yarn for the ladies there who like to crochet and knit. Immediately I guilted myself into just offering to donate the yarn. How could I make this lady pay for yarn that I got for free, especially when it was going to a good cause?

So Friday evening I found myself going through it all to make sure I had enough to finish my afghan, and I’ll admit, I kept a few extra skeins for future projects, but I packed three large garbage bags full up and ready to go for Saturday.

It wasn’t a tearful goodbye or anything like that. I didn’t grab the bags and make her drag them along with me to the door trying to cling to future projects that “could have been.” I gave them up knowing that some mentally challenged older ladies were going to have much more fun with this yarn than I would ever get around too.

And who knows, maybe I’ll drop in someday and see how they’re doing with it and get a nice pancho or pot holder out of it. In the meantime, I’ve got more storage space for all the other stuff my husband and I have both pack ratted away for future use.

- Sarah L. Polson

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