Saturday, March 13, 2010

I don't think that the yarn is ugly

In the previous post, Dmarks suggested that I get rid of my ugly yarn on eBay. I think that I have too much to say on the subject to answer as a comment.

First off, it isn't that I think the yarn is ugly. I think maybe some mice ate some, but I threw that out (and I'm trying to figure out how to wash some of it from that same box, like maybe in one of those lingerie bags). That is the closest thing I would have to ugly yarn, and I wouldn't want to sell it if I could fix the problem, and I wouldn't want to stick someone else with the problem if I can't fix it.

But most of it is not ugly or damaged or anything. I just don't quite know what to do with it right now.

When I first got into knitting, I bought a lot of stuff on sale, but then I didn't use it. It just didn't quite work for what I thought I would want. Like I wanted to make Dr. Who type scarves, and I found a thick yarn on sale (like Jiffy or Thick and Quick, but I really can't remember). I just bought a lot of different colors. The sad thing is that I found a picture of this stuff in an ad, and I went to the store and it wasn't supposed to be on sale, but I demanded to get the sale price because of the picture in the ad. They finally sold me the eighty dollars worth of yarn for about thirty dollars. I was very happy and took the yarn home.

Then I started looking online for pictures of the Dr. Who scarf and found a whole website about making the scarves, and the colors I had bought were not even close. I spent another two weeks collecting regular four-ply acrylic yarn that looked more like the colors I needed.

But now I still have this thick yarn, and I only have one or two of each color. It doesn't really suggest another project. I could still make a long multi-colored scarf, but it wouldn't look much like a proper Dr. Who scarf, and that is a lot of work for something that is not a proper Dr. Who scarf.

I bought other yarn when it as on sale, cause it just looked so interesting, but I didn't really have any idea what I would use it for. Or I had an idea, but either it didn't work out, or I needed something else to go with it, something else that I still don't have. I bought several skeins of purple yarn and several skeins of orange yarn for two dollars each, which was a good deal, as the skeins usually cost five or six dollars each. But for that project I also need a certain shade of red of the same type yarn, which I rarely find, and I never find it for two dollars a skein. So that project will be waiting a long time.

I have tried to be more selective about buying clearance yarn. If it doesn't suggest a certain project, I shouldn't buy it. It isn't a good deal if it is just going to be part of the stash forever and never get made into anything.

There are certain types of yarn that I should buy if they are really cheap, and eventually I will have enough of the right colors to make something. Certain types and colors that I have used before (Dr. Who colors and Hogwarts colors) I will buy on sale regardless of how much I have already, because I know that I will use it. I am trying to not buy so much of other colors, unless I already know what I plan to do with it.

I now have more than ten boxes of yarn. One box is of colors that I use on a regular basis for scarves. Another two boxes are of different color four-ply acrylic yarn. I don't doubt it will be useful at some point. I have a whole box of different kinds of white yarn, and I have almost that much black yarn. And the rest is just different stuff that I either don't know what to do with, or I am missing some other part of the planned project.

So that's it. I really have very little yarn that I want to get rid of on eBay, unless I could get a good deal for it, but I doubt that I would.

3 comments:

dmarks said...

Well, I didn't mean to say that you did have ugly yarn. I was just guessing that maybe you had some yarn that you later regretted getting.

Yarn probably does not get much money on eBay.

laughing said...

I bought some glow in the dark yarn that doesn't work. It gets plenty of money on eBay, when it is available.

I didn't use any of it, but I don't think that I want to sell it either. If it wasn't good enough for me I can't picture it being good enough for anyone else.

Ananda girl said...

That's a lot of yarn. I'd probably use it for granny squares since you have such a wonderful variety of colors and such.