A new adventure in the Bag o' Crap

What was it, three years ago that I swore off the Bag o' Crap yarn sales? This was after I got burned by the Cherry Tree Hill annual sales of Bags 'o Crap. After purchasing their yarn grab bags to expand my stash on the cheap, they sent me two really lousy ones in a row. By that I mean that I got 5 pounds or so of yarn made of shredded Muppets. I still have that yarn and now believe that I will eventually use it to make stuffed animals for children.

And then last week came an ad for 2.5 pound Bag's o' Crap from Dontbuynewyarn.com. They are an offshoot of Cherry Tree Hill. The bag was advertised to contain over a kilogram of discontinued Classic Elite yarn for $25. At the retail price of Classic Elite, I thought I'd only need something like three good skeins that I can actually use to get my money's worth. So I threw caution to the wind and ordered one.

Today my Classic Elite Bag o' Crap arrived.I am impressed. Really. I like more than half of this stuff. Not all of it is labeled, but I seem to have gotten:

• Some patterns I am totally uninterested in.
• Two skeins of Minnie. This can make a nice scarf.
• Four skeins of LuLu. It sucks. Something had to.
• Two skeins of something I cannot identify. It's at least aran weight and 8 or 10 plies of several colors. But it's soft.
• Two skeins of a very springy 100% wool in a cream color. It says "Remateks" with the numbers 3238 and 7202. It's nice.
  
• 4 skeins of what I believe to be Bubbles in two colors. Not bad.
• Two skeins of BamBoo in pink. it's nice and I'll certainly do something with it.
  
• Two skeins of Fame in different colors.
• Two skeins of Classic Silk. This is the real highlight. I was already planning on getting more and doing a striped sweatshirt type thing out of it. Now I have a head start

International S n B

Early in my knitting career, I knitted with a great group of ladies in Wheaton, Illinois. This was even before I knitted with the girls in Tinley Park. Both groups, mind you, were made up of really great ladies, and I've remained friends with them even after moving away.

The Tinley Park groups is still fairly intact. However, the Wheaton group was flung to the four winds over the years. We're all over the place at this point. Except for last Sunday morning when we all shared the same space on the InterTubes.

On Sunday morning, the group met together on video chat. The Essing and Beeing took place with knitters signing in from three continents:

Merry Gentlemen from Maryland
Llunar Llama from the Chicago area
Theory of String from the Chicago area
French Kitten from rural France
ajs from Ohio
KnightthatsayKNIT from Misawa, Japan

Isn't technology grand?

At long last

Long before I ever learned to knit I had an affair with my one true love.

Clay.
I was a potter. I had my own wheel and kilns and everything. Then tragedy struck. I royally messed up my left arm. What happened was a work related injury that robbed me of use of three of my fingers for a couple of years. Eventually, I had surgery that fixed the problem but by then I'd moved into a condo and was back in school. I didn't have time for pottery after my hand and arm recovered. Luck for me, my dad was kind enough to keep my equipment in his basement.

Last year I moved into this house that has a barn in the backyard that is perfect for a small pottery studio. In a flurry of excitement, I drove the truckster back and forth to Chicago twice to get all my stuff. However, I discovered that my wheel, which was already second or third hand when I got it, was in pretty bad shape. I couldn't start throwing. Then I got pregnant. My return to pottery was delayed for another year.

Until today! My brand new pottery wheel came today!The new wheel is on the left. My old one, which can still be used in a limited fashion, is on the right.

I'm so tickled. Look for this to become a place for yarn and mud induced mishegas.