Today my aunt, who started crocheting all of three weeks ago, took me and her friend Tina to this yarn outlet (!) about an hour from our little shitty town. (Yes, they let me loose in a yarn outlet store.) I walked away with almost 1000 krs ($125) worth of yarn, including a bag of yarn for my mom, who has the worst cold ever (and therefore couldn’t come). She never buys herself anything, and all the yarn and patterns she owns are either inherited or from the late 80s. She deserved something, so I got her enough to make a sweater.
And they weren’t joking when they called it an outlet either. For that money I got everything that is pictured above. My dear, dear grandmother paid for mom’s yarn in the end, or my bill would’ve bounced up above 1000 kr, but not by much.
To get into list mode, this is what I bought:
On the left: 20 skeins of Lowisa by Garngrossisten (real cheapo yarn, in other words!), 65% superwash wool, 35% acrylic. The color doesn’t have a name, but is a pretty variegated color with dark red and dark purple – my two favorite colors together!
In the middle: Three hanks of Pärlgarn, 100% mercerized cotton. I didn’t get a label, that’s how low budget this place was, but I know that’s what it is. The color is very close to that plum colored Lorna’s Laces that I mentioned a few entries back.
On the top right: 12 skeins of Superwash Ullgarn (the imagination must’ve been on vacation when they named it!) by Vartofta Garner (store brand yarn!). The color is very close to periwinkle, maybe a tad more blue.
On the bottom right: Six skeins of sock yarn, four of them are two different colorways of Mini Raggi by Järbo Garn, 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon. The other two skeins is Clown by Marks & Kattens, which is 45% cotton, 40% superwash wool and 15% nylon. The look of these are… well, the first two look a lot like the self-striping sock yarn Knitpicks used to have, and the latter reminds me of Sockotta, maybe a tad more low budget.
Before we left for this place I was worried that they would only have what is considered cheap-ish yarn in the US, acrylic that is so manmade that it squeaks as you knit along, but I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Lorna’s Laces or anything that resembles luxury fibers, but they had mercerized cotton, superwash wool, many many wool/acrylic blends, lots of mohair, and so on. It was oh so great.
If anyone living in Västergötland, Sweden, or anywhere near that the store is Vartofta Garner, which is situated in the tiny little village (not even a town!) of Vartofta. They have a big outlet sale, like the one we went to, twice a year, but are open daily as well. I’m not sure how cheap they are the rest of the year though. And they do mail orders as well!
Oh, and Tina, being on disability permanently because of her MS crochets and knits a lot of hats and sells them, since she has a friend with a store that sells crafty things, and suggested that I might be able to sell some felted bags. She would talk to her friend about it. I’m very excited, although I’m a little worried that I will sell myself short. I saw a hat that she had made, a really beautiful spring like, striped hat with earflaps, knitted in very thin mercerized cotton in four or five different colors, and found out that she only got paid 140 kr (barely US$20) for it. I don’t generally sell knitted stuff, because I don’t feel that I can get what it’s worth. The two things I’ve gotten paid for I made for friends; the hat I got US$30 for, and the scarf I got US$40, even though I asked for just $20 (because it was for a friend of a friend who just found out she had cancer – to maybe make her feel better in some way – so I didn’t mind not making any money from it). So, I’m undecisive, but it’s nice to be asked
And now I’m off to knit and call the straight version of myself, as I like to call my friend Amanda.
