Score!

One of my favorite lunch time activities when I'm bored is to go wander around the local thrift shop. I've found some decent deals there - the occasional cone of mystery yarn, a nice sweater to unravel, and of course lots of books! Today, I made the ultimate score though.

As I walked over to the section where they tend to put bags of assorted things, I spotted yarn...then I got closer...and then I realized that there were about 8 or 9 huge bags of yarn. I must have looked like a crazy person because I started pulling down all the bags and looking at each bag to figure out what kinds of yarn were in there and in what colors. Some had rug yarn, not great for my uses, but I narrowed it down to 5 bags that I just HAD to have (so much for destashing). Usually I expect to score some vintage looking acrylic at the thrift store but these bags had yarn marked as 100% wool, 100% cotton, and one has yarn that's 80/20 wool/nylon already wound into balls. Did somebody say socks? Lots of them? There's also a ton of hanks in natural colors - white, cream, grey and light beige - that are perfect for dyeing. :)

I estimate that I ended up with probably 100 balls or yarn in some form or another, for the ridiculously bargain price of $30! I cannot wait to get them out of my car and sort through them. In the meantime, I took some fuzzy pics with my camera phone because I was too excited to actually wait until I had my camera in my possession! Here are the bags taking up the majority of the back seat in my car. I really hope my husband doesn't kill me for this one!
What was your greatest thrift store find?

A productive day off

There isn't really anything fun about having to wake up at 7:00am on your day off to let in the workers who are continuing to demolish things in your house. Having said that, I had a very productive day.

After a little Guitar Hero, and watching them tile the walls for a little bit, I took a little trip to the Salvation Army Thrift Store a few miles from my house. Firstly, the place is huge. Figuring out where to start was a challenge, but I had also taken note of the 50% off store wide sign on the way in so was definitely determined to find something good! About 45 minutes later, I had found quite the load.

• Soft pink cardigan with brown collar: Wool/angora blend, bulky weight yarn that is buttery soft. If I had to liken it to a commercial yarn, I'd say Malabrigo! This one is already half unraveled and has come apart beautifully with no knots and no argument.
• Red Benetton sweater: 100% Merino wool and put together raglan style with no seams!! It's laceweight so may take a while to unravel but the no seams thing makes me a little giddy.
• Lemon sweater: 100% cashmere. It's a women's small but nonetheless I had to snatch it up. Best part about it? It was $0.95.
• Men's tweed sweater: Nice 100% wool in good condition. It is a tweedy yarn but is also begging to be overdyed.
  

The grand total price was $5.45 and I also found out that they have the 50% off sale on the last Friday of every month. I know where I'll be spending those Fridays!

I did have to run off to a lunch with some clients from work, but fortunately they're great guys and it's not a business lunch in the boring sense, so that was a good break. Then I had promised the husband to make moussaka for dinner. It's one of those meals that my mom used to make and that I loved as a kid but never tried for myself. This is the recipe I used and it turned out great. It took exactly an hour to prepare and then an hour and fifteen to bake. To top it off, our friend is on his way over with carrot cake for dessert! I could have dealt with a chance to sleep in but I definitely can't complain about how the day's been overall. =)

What is lavender, fuzzy and makes you sneeze?

After the success of unraveling my first sweater right before New Year's, which yielded about 800+ yards of yarn, I am finding my new supplement to the fiber arts to be quite entertaining. I've never been one for finding excellent thrifty deals but when I read about the finds that the thrifty folk on Ravelry (who inspired me to try this in the first place) seem to come across, I'm encouraged to keep looking!

The selection of thrift stores near home and work aren't wonderful, nor are these places super cheap. The concept of a wool sweater for $0.50 leaves me in awe and extremely jealous as I just can't see these particular stores selling for such prices.

• American Cancer Society (Burbank) - gorgeous stuff, but pretty expensive and more a place to go if you're trying to buy a $300 pair of designer jeans for $50.
• Goodwill (North Hollywood) - nice big and bright store, but terrible quality of sweaters right now. They're mostly acrylics and sweaters that just aren't in good condition.
• American Way Thrift Store (Burbank) - where I've been having the most success so far, but is accompanied by that very authentic thrift store "smell" to go with the dark and dusty warehouse looking room that it's comprised of. It also seems to be quite popular and is picked over quickly so the good stuff isn't around long enough to go on sale!

On my most recent trip this week, I went to American Way (at the intersection of Magnolia and California in Burbank, just in case any locals are reading this). The sweater section seems to be hugely depleted right now, probably on account of the 3 days of cold weather that we've had recently. Go figure that I would start trying to find sweaters to reclaim during the "cold" part of the year in L.A. Having said all that though, I did find a couple of nice sweaters.

The first is a beautiful lavender nylon/angora/wool blend. It appears to have been made in a raglan style and the seams have been pretty easy to work with. The downside being that I am completely covered in lavender angora rabbit fuzz and have had several sneezing sessions this afternoon seeing as it's taken over my office completely. The lace weight yarn that I'm getting from it seems worth it to me though and I am hoping to have well over 1000 yards once I'm done (insert happy dance).

The other sweater is a wool/rayon/angora/cashmere blend. The seams have been a little resistant but I am being patient and trying to remember how lovely and soft the yarn will be once I can get it undone. The other interesting thing is that what appears to be a worsted weight yarn in the sweater is actually 6 strands of lace weight. I'm going to keep it as a worsted 6-ply (sort of) because I don't really want to deal with un-stranding and weakening the yarn.

I am telling myself that this new fascination with commercially made sweaters is so that I can learn more about the formation of knitwear. After all, guys have been taking things apart to find out how they were put together for years right? =)