Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Battle of the Scrap Bags

 On Veterans' Day (11/11/24), I went to a local thrift store, AmVets, knowing they would have 50% off all items. My husband needed a pair of jeans for gardening, and I was looking for a pair of jeans for myself, too. I figured if they had any yarn, that would be a perk! In the past, I got several full skeins of Bernat Blanket yarn for $2 each at that store. 

I hit the jackpot with yarn! I picked up 18 bags, a whole cartful! I spent $30.80 on yarn, and managed to find a pair of jeans for my husband, and a pair for myself! 


When I got home, I made a YouTube video about the yarn haul: Thrifting Haul Video

I pulled out a bag and got started.
 Bag 1
One of the first projects was making granny squares from the small scraps. Why? Because the jeans I bought myself were too short! I made some granny squares, sewed them together, and sewed them to the bottom of the jeans. 
In all, I made 10 projects from the bag, with an estimated sales value of $105. Some of the items sold already! (Marked with *) I worked on bag 1 from 11/11 to 11/21. I was busy on some other items because of a large custom order and craft shows. 

1. Variegated Pink Loaf Cat*
2. Granny Squares for my jeans
3. Blue-Green T-Rex
4. Variegated Pink Stingray* 
5. 3 eggs
6. Ballerina Kitty*
7. Camo sea turtle*
8. Flip Octo
9. Denim Cat
10. Ocean Ombre Turtle

I summarized the projects made from this bag in this YouTube video. There were a total of 10 projects with an estimated sales value of $105. Since I made these items in the middle of my fall craft shows, I already sold $36 worth of them, thus paying for all 18 bags of yarn already. 

On to bag #2 - started on 11/22
 This bag was a tangled mess. It took me an hour and a half to wind it into neat cakes. There were 36 balls/cakes of yarn. 
Projects: 
1. Rainbow Kooky Owl*
2. Green Snake
3. Green Axolotl
4. Rainbow Patches the Bear*
5. November Monster v. 1.0*
6. November Monster v. 2.0
7. November Monster v 3.0
8. Rainbow Loaf Cat
9. Green Snake
10. Happy Coffee (Matcha) Red
11. Red T-Rex
12. Christmas Snail
13. Christmas Snake
14. Green Angry Coffee
So, 14 items from this bag, with an estimated sales total of $96. I sold three items from the list, for a total of $34. I finished on 11/28 (Thanksgiving), thanks to craft time at my daughter's house, and somebody else cooking Thanksgiving dinner! Here is the summary video for that bag. 

On to Bag 3, which had a lot of small balls of Red Heart Neon Stripes yarn. This video
 goes through what was in the bag. 

Here's what I made from that bag: 
1) Neon Stripe Loaf Cat
2) Purple Monster - November Monster of the Month
3) Hilde the Highland Cow - Brown
4) Happy Coffee - Rainbow
5) Micro Octo
6) Purple Whale
7) Black/Rainbow Gecko
8) Gray Whale
9) Axolotl sleeping bag
10-12) Owls (Gufo Ernesto)
13) Rainbow Gecko (purple to red)
14) Super Scrappy Snake
15) Rainbow Dinosaur
16) Tanner the Mini Triceratops
17) Brown Mouse, red shirt
18) Neon Stripe Turtle
So, a total of 18 items, with an estimated sale value of $197. So far the most items from one bag! 

I opened bag 4 just before a trip down to PA (Dec. 13-15) for our family Christmas. The bag had a lot of white, which I needed for a Christmas gift for my granddaughter Lyra. She watches a show called "Hilda and Twig", so for Christmas she got a book and her own amigurumi Twig (a white deer-fox). I don't think I got a picture of Twig, but it is in this video.

1) Twig
2) Highland Cow "Curly"
3) Tanner the mini triceratops - Blaze
4) Snowman
5) Stegosaurus - Brick
6) Chubs mouse
7) Ombre Rex
8) Mouse - Purple Shirt
9) Stingray Purple
10) Stingray orange
11) Mouse - Blue & White
12) Hilde - Snowball

So only 12 projects from that bag, but many of them were bigger, more expensive items, so the estimated sales value was $218 (the best so far as I'm typing this). I finished up that bag 12/19 

Bag 5 - This bag was pinks and purples, one pound, 3 ounces. 
1) Ballerina Kitty - pink dress
2) Pink Jellyfish
3) Macaroon
4) Ankylosaurus (purple and gray)
5) Pink penguin
6) Purple Dachshund
7) Pink Monkey
8) Pink/Purple Turtle
9) Purple Bear, Pink Scarf
10) December Monster Pink
11) Pink Axolotl
Only 11 projects, estimated sales value $177

Bag 6 had lots of small pieces. It had 11.4 ounces of bigger yarn balls (27 of them) and 2.4 ounces of tiny scraps
1)  Blue penguin
2) Green Penguin
3) Purple Tail Merkitty
4) Rainbow turtle
5) Crazy Daisy Giraffe
6) Merkitty - white / pink
7) Pink Possum
8) Blue Brown Camo Cute little dino
9) Mico octo sad red
10) Micro octo angry blue/brown
11) Micro octo angry blue
12) Loopy Chicken Blue
13) Loopy Chicken Pink/Brown
14) African Flower Sea Turtle Pink/Blue/Brown
15) Pink/Purple Turtle
16) Navy Blue Monster
Pretty good assortment from this bag: 16 items made, $166 in estimated sale value

Bag 7 - started January 8 
1 pound, 1.3 oz of yarn - 16 good-sized balls and 40+ pieces of small scrap yarn. 
I set aside the yarn in the box for my first project. 
Bag 7: 
1. Ballerina Kitty
2) Crazy Daisy Cow
3) Camo T-Rex
4) Platypus (Blue)
5) Ombrea, teal turtle
6) Mini Stingray, purple
7-9) Micro Octos
10) Orange/White Chill Pill
11) Blue/Cream happy Pill
12) Brown/Blue/Pink African Flower Turtle
13) Blue/Camo Micro Octo
14) Green steg with rainbow spikes
16) African FLower Rutle Sunny
16) Light BLue Stingray
17) Messy Monster
18) Bluwe Axolotl
19) Purple Triceratops
20) Camo/Brown Land Turtle
21) Light Blue Triceratops


Bag 8
1) Ivory Basket
2) white Basket
3) Ballerina Kitty (brown with green dress)
4) Macaron
5) Peeps Bunny
6) Loopy Chicken Orange
7) Green/White turtle in egg
8) Orange Happy Coffee


Bag 9:
1. Flip the Fish
2. Blue Peep
3) Tanner - Pastels
4) Green Peep
5) Tanner Multi-Color
6) Armie of One 
I ran out of purple yarn making arms for project 5, so I used the one extra arm to make a cute little guy, an "Armie of One"

7. Christmas Chameleon
8. Tri-Color Happy Coffee
9. Mostly Blue African Flower Turtle
10. Green Maccaron
11. Yellow / Pink Maccaron

Bag 11 
I started Bag 11 on January 28. It was mostly orange with one skein of gold and one skein of gray. I discovered that the gray was wool, so I couldn't use it for amigurumi... so I made myself a nice warm cowl for this "winter that never ends". 
1. Gray Wool cowl
2. Mushroom Duck
3 Highland Cow
4. Cute Mini Dino
5. Allez Crochet Duck
6. Orange hat for #5
7. Orange Platypus
8. Small Beer
9. Large zBeer
10. Gold baby axolotl
11) Orange hamster
This bag was a total of 11 projects with an estimated sales value of $142.


Bag 12 was a single skein of burnt orange yarn (very vintage... back when there were K-Mart stores all over, and they carried yarn!), and it matched some of the leftover yarn from Bag 11, so I kept on going with orange projects: 
1) Orange Gecko
2) Loaf Cat
Only two items from that "bag", with an estimated value of $30.

Bag 13 also had orange in it! I was having a spinning wheel pick my next bag, and it kept coming up with the orange bags! 
1-2) Carrots
3) Mini Dachshund
4) Reese Ankylosaurus
5) Foxy Knoxy
6) Tommy Tiger
7) Peach Axolotl
8) Peach Hamster
9) Text Me Cookie
10) Geen Sparkle Turtle
11) Cactus
12) Green Stingray - small
13) Green Stingray - Large
14) Hug Monster

On February 8, I opened up bag 14. It contained over 90 very small balls of yarn, totalling about 15 ounces. 

Once I sorted things out, I saw that there were a lot of the same colors in bag #15 so I decided to merge them. 

I ended up with 8 bags of mostly one color, a scrap bag of pinks and purples, a scrap bag of blues, and a misc. scrap bag. I think I'm going to get a lot of projects out of this collection... 1 pound, 14 ounces total.
1. Chubby Blue dinosaur
2. Hatching Party Dinosaur
3 Black loaf cat
4) Flat Bear
5) Purple Elephant
6-8) Mushy Boi
9) Mushy Boi Mini
10-11) Mushy Boi
12) Mr Blue Striped Giraffe
13) Mushy Boi Mini
14) Pink Hamster
15) Pink Striped Stegosaurus
16) Camo Stegosaurus
17) Camo Baby Steg
18) Camo Mushroom Boy
19) Blue Stripe Steg













Bag Summary: 
Bag #   # of items made, Estimated sales value
1    10    $105
2    14    $96
3    18    $197
4    12    $218
5    11    $177
6    16    $166
7    20    $200
8     8    $83
9    11   $114
10    











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