Thrifty Crochet

On New Year's Day I finished making a big beautiful basket ( video tutorial here ) out of scrap variegated yarn so I could stow some thrifted skeins of Mandala Ombre and other yarns I want to work with this month. I'm now looking through patterns to see what I can make with some of the more exotic yarns I've thrifted. I might crochet some slippers or socks out of the very fine, fingering weight yarn I've collected. More on that after I've found some patterns to swatch. I'm also waiting on one last lot of yarn I won last year to be delivered; it seems to be bouncing all over the country. When it finally lands I'll show you the skeins and figure out the value. In the day job department, my initial pitch for this year's big series project was approved, so now I'm working on getting my new delivery schedule reviewed and thinking about how I want to work on the project. I must also outline all the particulars in a project from start to fi...

When you thrift yarn it sometimes comes with little surprises you don't expect. My most recent discovery was a hank of what looked like human hair in an exotic yarn lot (it's actually a silk and alpaca blend.) The nastiest surprise of last year was finding a rusting sewing needle stuck in a ball of yarn (another reason why pink is not my favorite color.) Often crocheters leave their hooks stuck in a skein and then forget about them. I have an entire bag of hooks I've recovered from thrifted skeins. Knitting needles are more rare to find, but you will get these still attached to a project, too. My arthritis prevents me from knitting, so I donate these to our local church thrift store. Unfinished projects are common finds as well, often still attached to the skein or ball of yarn used to make them. Last year I finished the final row of this baby blanket that came in a lot of thrifted yarn, and it made me very happy.

I love to crochet blankets. They're pretty, practical, and there are tons of gorgeous free patterns for them on the internet. I usually do a throw size, but I plan to make a couple of bed-size blankets this year. What I look for is a pattern I can adapt to working with many different colors (thrifting yarn usually means you generally don't have many multiples) and that has a repeating row or rows that are easy to crochet. This is one I made from Anastacia Zittel's Ocean Tranquility pattern ( free to download and print out here .) The pattern is a little more challenging than most of the ones I make, but I love the way it turns out. The color combination may seem odd, but I wanted a look of sitting on beach sand and watching the tide roll in. This throw was the favorite one I made from last year; it's made based on the Worth Street pattern from Mary Maxim ( free to download and printout here ) with a bit of tweaking on my part. Another name for this on...

I'm still working out how I want to run this blog, so be prepared for some changes to it now and then. In the past I've had to moderate or even shut down comments on my other blogs because of SPAMmers. I want to try being accessible to everyone first, however, so I've changed the blog settings to let anyone comment, even anonymous. Let's see how that works out. :) Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay

Back in October of last year my guy and I visited a new-to-us Goodwill near The Villages in central Florida. In the back they had bins with bagged skeins of nice-looking yarn that were very reasonably priced (less that $5.00 per bag) so I picked up several. I ended up with fourteen mostly new and odor-free skeins for less than twenty bucks, or about a dollar forty-two per skein. These three variegated skeins are super pretty, and will likely be combined with another color to become a throw, or make up a hat and matching scarf this year. These skeins I've already used to make a hat and two scarves while trying out some new patterns, which I consider practice crocheting. I had a blast with it, too. I think buying from brick and mortar thrift stores is possibly the best (although not the cheapest) way to thrift yarn. You can see it in person, they usually come in nice-size bundles, and if need be you can ask an employee to opbn a bag so you can check for soiling and...

All of the yarn pics in this post are lots that I bid on this week. I like looking for yarn online to thrift as the prices can be super cheap, and I'm also helping keep yarn out of landfills. I bid $10.00 for each lot, and I may or may not win them for that price. There is also shipping and handling to be added, so I usually won't bid any more than $10.00 for a lot. Be careful at online auctions and set a firm maximum bid. Sometimes bidders start a war over yarn lots, particularly those that have more modern skeins or multiples of a particular color. All of these lots were likely donated by makers or makers' families cleaning out their stashes. Occasionally a maker or shop will donate new skeins, but you should expect everything to be vintage, discontinued lines, and possibly partially used. Some also come with other materials included, like this one (I love hat boxes for storage.) The biggest issue with thrifting online is the condition of what you g...