Sale...Sale...Sale...

Today was the semi-annual bag sale at the Yarn Lady in Laguna Hills where thousands upon thousands of bags of yarn are placed in large metal bins and all marked 50% off. For those of you outside of California, Laguna Hills is about an hour fifteen north of San Diego. The sale begins at 8:00am, which means you have to leave SD no later that 6:30am...on a Saturday. This is a requirement because what if some else gets your stuff? Fortunately, I'm not the only one who sees the logic in this madness. Crazy is best diffused when surrounded by crazy, which means you are no longer crazy. You are normal. Like me.

So Knitzalot, Kris and I took off right on time. In fact, I don't think there is a more punctual bunch than knitters on their way to a 50% off sale. We got their at about 8 minutes to 8:00 and did you know there were already a ton of people bin diving? Seriously, people. Did they even have time to finish getting ready before the chaos began? Actually, the beginning wasn't that bad, lots of people, but everyone was still checking everything out and surveying what was there. The plan of action was to grab it if you liked it and then decided if you really *needed* it later. (At one point I had $600 retail worth of wool/cashmire in my bag.)

It was when the culling began that it got a bit nasty. Things would get tossed back that you didn't see the first time through. And what if you could find another bag of that pretty orange merinio that you kept holding onto, which would be practically useless unless you found another bag...somewhere? There was quite a bit of rechecking for certain prized things. And there may have been a joint bin diving incident that almost landed us all in the big front bin with our feet flailing in the air. In our defense, it was hard to reach the middle on the bottom...and you have to check there...because that may be where that last bag of yarn is...

So, without further ado, I present to you my new additions to the stash:

I splurged and picked up enough Anny Blatt Cachemir Anny in Veloute (612) to make the Cabled Shrug from IK. I want this for my office which is usually sub-zero, but won't probably get made until the fall. Another find that I am extremely excited about and may even get knit up this weekend (or at least the swatch will) is the GGH Goa in a dark green/teal (23). This has been earmarked for my elusive knit - Cable-Eight. I also picked up some strange man-made stuff called Emozione from Austermann that I thought would make a nice sage (0009) Pullover Flair. The two bags of Topacio from Valeria di Roma in mint green (023) and royal-ish blue (043) are the only really non-earmarked additions. It is a Cotton-Ease substitute and since I happened to be with two of the biggest members of the Cotton-Ease fan club, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Finally, the Trekking XXL (100). Not on sale. Enough said.

Overall I think the three of us did pretty good. We didn't find all those prized things we were looking for, but we can all still afford to put dinner on the table. I highly recommend going with friends, not only are there that many more eyes helping you look for that last elusive bag, you can remind each other of the logic of each selection. Something that is often lost in such thick yarn fumes. Let's just say that Kris and I saved each other about $90 on sweater yarn that wouldn't have really saved us any money.