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Dorrie's Doll Diaries
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Yard sale fun - and misery mavens love 'em, too !
Now Playing: kittens playing with spools...but I just can't get mad at 'em...

 

Current Mood : Super Lucky (especially if this one goes through on the first three or four tries !) 

 

Current Image Notes : Here's our two guys, cuddling in my new sewing chair that is, arguably, not only the best place to sleep, but is the best scratching post ever !!!

 

Hit the one yard sale in town today - and $4. got me 56 spools of thread, a vintage 70s sewing box, two stacking thread racks, a copy of Fabric Savvy ( I already have More Fabric Savvy), a yard of yellow background floral fabric, two notebooks, a huge bag of snap and hook/eye fasteners, a rag rug braiding set, a sewing machine needle threader, some stationery, an action-figure scale medical Jeep, and a tiny blue plastic castle (the latter two for Dearest Son, of course ! Well, I may play with the castle for some photos first...).

 

Another yard sailer there detailed all her past and current surgeries to me, and complained that being a teacher meant she had to buy sooo much out of her own pocket. I commiserated and sympathized, until she said that at the first of August, she had to paint her classroom. What ? Now I know City of employs painters just for the schools, so I was taken aback. But heck, we have gallons of paint lying around - did she want some ?

 

Oh, no, no, no. By ‘paint', she meant ‘decorate'. Bulletin boards and stuff. Huh ? Maybe she needs another operation or two ... I have no idea why strangers tell me all this stuff. People I know don't tell me squat half the time so I don't worry, but I got totally random folks offering me rather intimate life details for no reason. I got to hear the surgery checklist again as she related it to the seller when she went to pay for her $18. worth of stuff.  Bizarre.

 

On the way to the sale, I passed by a couple guys opening shop in a vacant lot. Office chairs - and if the sign was correct, $10. each. It's hard to discern quality at 40mph, so I stopped on my way back. My legs had stuck to the kitchen chair when I was machine-sewing the last of BIL's robe yesterday, and once before, so I was ready for a better chair. Found a great one - tilt and rock and lift, with great wheels and nearly-new upholstery, and gladly shelled my $10. They even loaded it into Molly's backseat for me. I went for one without arms, because I found that works better for me at the sewing table. At the computer, I want arms to lounge on !

 

Hit Community Thrift, but didn't find anything. Made them an offer on the Cinderella doll they've had since March, but they really thought they'd find someone to buy the lot at $9. ‘S OK. I'm sure I'll find more as the yard sale season continues. Besides, it's not like I had time to work on her right now anyway.

 

Came home and finished the robes and that POS cloak. Took about an hour and a half. Since BIL lives with Gramma, I called her to ask if I could visit for a bit when I dropped them off. One thing I love about Gramma - Beloved Hubby's maternal grandmother - she's always ready for a visit. After a quick ramen lunch, I was enjoying a nice early afternoon chat. And the sensation of finally being DONE !

 

After that, it was grocery time. I'm glad I waited - FIL picked up Dearest Son yesterday, for an extended visit, so I could shop solo. Dearest's quite a good and patient shopper, and when I tell him this time, we're just looking, he hardly ever even asks. *I'm * the one who wants to get him another toy - I'm the one bustin' the grocery budget, not him ! And who did I meet there but BIL ! Told him I'd just dropped everything off, and I hoped he liked it. If he saw anything that needed to be fixed, he was welcome to call me and I'd laugh at him and not fix it. Yeah, I was a bit passive-aggressive by this time. But he laughed and said he completely understood and appreciated all I did. So, far as I'm concerned, that part of my life is over ! Words can't express how happy that makes me.

 

Came home and basically did nothing for a while but gloat over my new possessions. Beloved Hubby likes my chair, and was glad I'd found such a good price for it. The olive-green plastic sewing box didn't thrill him as much as it wowed me, but gosh, every person I knew who sewed when I was a kid had these boxes, usually in easy-to-chip yellow and green, with that wavy zig-zag texture. There must've been twenty sizes of ‘em. Some had lift-out trays, some were pattern totes, some were just for thread. 

 

I feel a little closer to being a ‘real' sewist now that I have one. Funny how that works sometimes.

 

Then I got a bit bored after dinner and decided to sort through all that new thread. There were actually nine more spools of thread, but they were yarn-like, the stuff you'd use for crewel or other crafts. There were also eight bobbins, loaded with thread. Unfortunately, those aren't the bobbin size my machine takes, but I can still use ‘em - they work just as well as a spool for the top thread ! Once I had it all placed and organized, I decided to do some cheap-serging. Needed to test out the new chair, and get it to the right height anyway.

 

Emptied seven spools and two bobbins. I mostly used the small spools that didn't have much thread on ‘em, and some I loaded straight into bobbins for my machine. I also discovered that thread was more precious back in the days of wooden spools. One spool had three different colors hand wound onto it...and only one thread length was more than five yards. These days, that short a strand really wouldn't be worth bothering with. Another spool had all one color, but it was several short lengths, and I couldn't tell until I tried to use it and it kept running out, and I had to keep threading the machine with the next length. It's sad that I threw a handful of it away, but it just wasn't worth hanging on to - or rewinding - three yards of navy blue. I hate hand-sewing, and avoid it whenever possible. And I ran into my first spool of thread too delicate to use. It broke while I was winding the long tail back onto the spool. And kept on breaking. Poor thing.

 

My box of empty thread spools is getting full. Aside from kitten toys, I'm not sure what else to do with ‘em. Any ideas - or does anyone want some ?

 

PS - 'Brothers' was also posted to In The Pink.


Posted by dorriebelle at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, 2 May 2011 4:40 PM CDT

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