Category: Not so ordinaries

I restrained myself, and spent 80bucks, half of what they are worth, because the poor man is trying to clear his departed wife’s stash in this estate sale.

A Valdani “Collection” (12 balls of  3ply embroidery floss), 10 DMC perles in #8 and #5, Caron Wildflowers in colourways i haven’t seen before, a couple of delicious mystery brands, and that solid DMC greeny bit because it reminds me of wasabi mustard.

This was a drop in the bucket. The woman had, i kid you not, about 5000 times as much thread, in boxes, cases, hatboxes, worm binder thingies, bags, storage carry cases and more. I kid you not. Seriously. I’d have taken more, but i fight with linen threads, the silks were too fine, and the solid DMC’s are readily available anywhere.

And he gave me this:

The legs have zipped openings as well. I’ll be quite stylish carrying this one 🙂

 

Attended the UjaamaGrammas big sale yesterday with my friend Susan—–kind of shocking to see all the stash that has been handed off to others!!!!!!!! BOLTS of fabric, bags of fabric, piles of yardages of fabrics, grab bags of fabric, a quilting cottons room, umpteen “kits” never touched, a long wall FULL of yarns, a room full of patterns, books and magazines. Admittedly, i had donated 3 huge garbage bags full of my stash! The place was wall to wall people, but apparently we came at the right time, because even though it had “opened” the night before, it was still crammed with stuff. Some years, there have been block long lines waiting to get in!

And admittedly too, i brought 3 ( much smaller) bags home 🙂 I deliberately took “only” 75 bucks with me in cash (though they did accept debit and credit cards). I spent 5bucks for two “tapestry” frames, a buck for a bag full of “crochet cotton balls” most for dyeing, a dollar for 4 books, 22dollars for 22YARDS of fabric (most for dyeing, though there are also a couple of chunks for fall wardrobe purposes), 2bucks for admission, and i donated 6, because WTH. Grand total: 37 smackeroos.

And Susan generously gave me the two longer that she had got last year 🙂

The largest frame is the PERFECT size so that i can finally do the standing figure for “Tabula Memoria”, without struggling to keep the grain straight–my largest hoop would have necessitated moving the fabric in and out of the grip, and that would have meant the grain would surely have been off on the damned haremcloth. (Love AND hate that stuff!)

The minute i got home, all of the fabrics went into the washer.

Silk A FREEKIN’ DOLLA A YARD, five yards, this one will be thioxed gently to remove some colour:

Cottons for dyeing, naturally and not ;):

The top piece is my favoured cotton flannellette, used for stabilizing all of my work, *as i work it. Sometimes more expensive than the dyeable cottons!!

The wardrobe pile:

The blue piece is the only piece that we mis-identified–we thought it was a sueded silk, but alas, it’s polyester.  That being said, it will be great for binding edges and slivers of detail. The yellow rayon may possibly be overdyed with indigo. The top fabric, also a rayon, will have some of the motifs embellished and accented somehow, and/or overdyed.

Threads to dye:

Some of these are quite quite fine, which means they’re going to be great for dyeing in variegation, and possibly plying together in one needle. The black is actually a slippery fine rayon. (I could have stuffed probably 10 bags with these threads as they were a dollar a stuffed bag, but space is a premium in the stoodio, so restrained myself!)

The books:

Now, i recently got rid of half of my library, so these will probably be passed on in a short while to someone! The *only* reason i bought the Rosemary Eichorn book was because when i had my wearable art business in the 90’s, i COVETED it desperately!

It was funny too, to suddenly reach exclaiming about a certain fabric and then realizing as i touched it, that i had donated it–it stayed! Didn’t see anything else i had gotten rid of, so i guess someone fell in love with the rest of it–ha!