A Serious Sort of Labor Day Weekend Sale

I went with my neighbor to a serious sort of Labor Day Weekend Sale.  Two of her friends from her work were selling the private stash of a serious spinner, and sewer who had died prematurely before getting the opportunity to consume her materials.

We were one of the first to arrive.  Though it was a less intense estate sale than the sort that I had been to before, I had learned well with the first one!  I knew enough that if I saw something I wanted and touched it, not to pause or put it down, as the person behind you will take more interest in it and it will then be a lost opportunity unless they put it down as well.  It also taught me that not everything is a bargain, no matter how inexpensive it may seem.

I started in the room with the Husquvarna equipment.  I have an embroidery machine. I have far from exhausted the possibilities of its use and I spotted a 3D Sketch, that would help me to design my own images and move away from commercial designs that are overly pattened for commercial use. The price was right and it was the first thing that I picked up.

I find Husquvarna instruction manuals wanting, and instruction a hassle to obtain. I have limited physical energy, so lugging my equipment to class remains an issue for me. A couple of years ago I stumbled upon some dealer instruction manuals that don't seem to be readily available to the public through Sewitsforsale.com. I am in search of these sorts of books and so I hit the book section of the sale next.  There it was: a 3 D instruction manual for instructors with detailed directions to create various projects to develop embroidery skills on my machine.  It was a fat and expensive spiral book and looked promising for learning more about digitizing designs! It was only $5--now sold to me! I clutched it tightly, and added it to the bottom of my pile lest anyone else be tempted to mix it in with their selections.  Yes, I had started a pile at their check out station!

Are women the worst when it comes to sales?  We become like greedy scavengers, and must have an innate foraging ability built in perhaps from primitive days of gathering food for our children.  My innate foraging ability has been well developed indeed, though only used for gathering food for my children, through a phase of triple couponing and more honed with coupon sales at Joann's Fabrics!

There were primitive quilting design books, including rug hooking magazines.  These are the sorts of designs I research to create my own designs.  I then began to realize that the person who had left such materials and I were like soul sisters and I began to feel the pain of her mortality along with my own.

I joke about cutting all my materials before I die, making it such that whoever gets them next will be committed to my plans for them, but it was not a funny joke to the person who had volunteered to put on this sale.  She responded that I had better be sure to organize my materials with written plans and prepackage my projects for those that come after, to help others sell my wares.  She was hitting upon the truth that I try to avoid.  It isn't a case of IF I die, but WHEN.

The job of putting this sale together was no small venture.  I realized I am one of those “cut from the same cloth” that are committed to serious craft creations. We truly live and die to create, and what we plan to create far exceeds the parameters of our life and our collections of materials reflect that!  (To be continued)…………