Poppin' tags

Have you ever done a thing that was both so awesome and so wretched you simply didn't know whether to jump up and down for joy or smack yourself with a shovel?

It's like that.

Four years ago, one of my coven found a yard sale at which were being sold luxury yarns for $1-2 per skein. Skeins that, mind you, bore price tags marked upwards of $40. And not just one or two skeins, no, bins of yarn. Boxes of yarn of identical dye lots. Heaps and piles and bunches of yarn, nice yarn, soft yarn.

She went nuts. Then she called other members of the coven, they went to the sale house, and they went nuts. One of them went away to get more money, and when she got back was informed that someone else had arrived and carried off the rest of the yarn she had in the garage that day, alas. But there was more! Garage Sale Lady said, her mother in law had owned a yarn shop, and there were scads more yarn where this had come from. But it was not there that day, she would call us when she was ready to clear it out.

Over the past four years, this yarn and yard sale have taken on the tone of legend in our coven. We'd go along for weeks or months before someone would say, in hushed tones of reverence, Remember the garage sale lady? I hear she's getting ready to sell the rest. The coven member who found the garage sale tended to stalk Garage Sale Lady's house on the weekend of the community garage sales. In a totally non-creepy way, of course. She'd just cruise by to see if the tables were out or not (always not.)

Oh, we who did not attend the first sale did not believe! They couldn't have been all that nice! Not for $1 per skein! Who does that sort of thing?

Well, after four years of rumor and speculation, the garage sale lady re-emerged from the darkness. She contacted us and said she might be available soon. Not one to let a good thing go, our coven leader emailed her, asked what she wanted for the lot, and bought it all. Our coven now has it's own mini-yarn shop, and they DID NOT LIE. This yarn is...it's stuff I've only ever heard of on Ravelry, through other knitters, through foreign blogs. Silks and super fine merinos and ribbon yarns that look like candy, more and more and more. It's Mythical Yarn. We have our own doorway to Yarnia.

I went last night to the private Coven Store, and paid $43 for over $540 worth of yarn (if I go by the price tags). There's antique yarns and foreign yarns and yarns I've never heard of anywhere. I'd show you everything I bought, but I think I'd break Blogger. Here's some highlights:

This yarn? IT'S FREAKIN' CAMEL. And wool. But CAMEL!!

I am...without words. This stuff is beyond awesome. Now, I just have to figure out where I'm going to store it all!