FIBER FAIR
Susie came to stay with me on Sunday. Since then, all week, she has been sorting through the yarn and knitting needles and sewing materials in Kathe’s knitting room. Kathe had a wonderful sense of color and whenever she found beautiful wool yarn on sale she bought it. She knitted beautiful sweaters and socks and small display pieces. Knitting greatly enriched her life. When she was knitting she was fully alive.
But when Susie and I finally woke up to the fact that we were storing these yarns without anyone ever going to make anything with them, we decided that Kathe would most like us to share them with people who loved to knit as much as she did.
But this, it turns out, is hard to do. A yard sale wouldn’t attract many people. We could give yarn away to a children’s craft group, but it is hard to know whom to give it to. So we decided to sell it for a very reasonable price to people who were passionate about knitting. Susie signed up for the yearly Asheville Fiber Fair where at least a hundred women set up booths and sold their unused yarn or other sewing materials. Kathe had eagerly awaited this sale each year and would spend over $100 there, sometimes much more, feeling guilty but unable to resist.
To prepare for the sale Susie had to sort through the yarns, put the same color of yarn into a ziploc bag and then price the hundreds of bags without knowing what to charge, which we then took to the fair in large bins. Once there she looked around and discovered that even though she was selling everthing at half price or less, other vendors seemed to be pricing wool even lower, so she halved the price again. Our goal was to transfer as much as we could to people who wanted the wool, not to make as much money as we could.
In the end we sold half of the wool yarn that we had brought and were well satisfied. Not that is is sorted and priced we will be able dispose of it more easily another time.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 