How to Make the Most of a Garage Sale

by Kelly

via Saving to be Rich

So garage sales season is upon us again. I have seen any number of articles on how to improve sales, but usually I skim right by them. Until, that is, I had my own garage sale, and lackluster sales convinced me that I was doing something wrong.

So here are a few of the more interesting/outrageous guidelines that I have seen, which may help you whether you're selling or buying.

1. When haggling, have your cash in your hand before you begin.
 Apparently, seeing and touching money releases endorphins, and that just might tip the balance in your favor in a totally subconscious way.
my suggestion: Next time you're going to bring up a troublesome topic with your spouse, haul out the cash. They won't suspect a thing.


2.  Play classical music at your sale.
 Classical music makes people feel more affluent, so they will spend more.
my suggestion: avoid opera unless you're trying to sell a Valkyrie helmet.


3.  Place the good stuff on the right.
Retail stores spend millions designing floor plans to maximize sales. Cash in on their research dollars by doing things the way they do. Their top secret trick? Arranging things to suit the millions of right-handed people in the world.
 my suggestion: Alternately, give up on having garage sales and convince a retail store that you are a feng shui guru. If that fails, offer classes on how to maximize the flow of chi through a yard and garage.

4.   Appeal to men.
A couple is going somewhere else, but they see your sign. The guy will agree to stop if he sees something manly (grills, power tools, chain saws) at your sale.
my suggestion : Grill food out in front of the sale and sell hamburgers and hot dogs as well. Searching for bargains is hungry work, and men are drawn to grills like flies to honey.


5.   Moving displays sell more.
Sometimes up to 317% more. (Such an exact number...there must be science involved...) Put that old record player to use by putting a jewelry stand on top of it.
my suggestion: Have your kid or spouse help with this one - teach him/her to juggle and have them perform (with non-fragile merchandise) out in front of the sale. Give them a hat to put on the ground for the obligatory 'performance art tip'. If it's a really slow sales day, set one of the juggling items on fire. Make sure the burning item isn't something valuable (see number 6 below).

6. Google it.
Not sure if that game unit is really a bargain? Send a text to Google at 466453 with the item's make and model and the words 'price' and 'used'. You'll get a list of current prices.
my suggestion for sellers: Google everything in your sale before you price it. That old Valkyrie helmet might be worth serious cash. And why do you have a Valkyrie helmet, anyway? Never mind, I probably don't want to know.

7.  Don't accept tattoos in lieu of cash.
At my sale, someone offered to tattoo me in exchange for a weight lifting set. (Yes, this is a true story. No, it's not because I live in a disreputable neighborhood. Sadly, this wasn't the strangest thing that happened at my sale.) I passed on the offer for many reasons, but mostly because the exchange rate was too difficult to figure out and I dislike haggling. That's the main problem with having a garage sale - right around the afternoon of day two, you get so tired of looking at your old stuff, and so desperate to get rid of it, that you will happily accept live chickens or monopoly money as barter if your customer doesn't have enough cash.


I hope those tips are helpful. And here's one more, just to make it an even number - for a current list of garage sales in your area, go to garagesalefinder.com. Ha! I worked a link in here after all!

The Wish of One Thousand Paper Cranes

by Kelly


We've been in the process of trying to build a new house for some time now. This is taking much longer than expected, since it turns out that houses are mostly made of wood...or at least, paper.

Behold just a portion of the paperwork required. To the left are the house plans. To the right are the plat survey and site plan. On the bottom are the letters that we are required to mail to our neighbors to notify them that we are building a new house, as if they didn't know this already.

In the middle are the variances we are required to file because since the house currently on our property was built they have changed the zoning regulations. These forms had to be filled out in triplicate. And notarized.

We also had to file a copy of these variance forms  with four local regulatory agencies (fire department, etc). These copies had to be sent certified mail (the receipts for that are the green slips in the center, and if you don't have all of those green slips, forget about filing your variance - that's how we got turned away last time).

Oh, and the CD's? Well, those contain a copy of the legal description of our property. Of course, they also wanted multiple paper copies of the legal description. I'm not quite sure why there has to be a CD version  as well - I suspect these required bits of almost outmoded technology are the Land Use Office's version of a Great Leap Forward.  Or maybe they're only trying to find a use for those mysterious white devices that take up so much room on their desks.

Have I mentioned that this variance process is going to cost us about $2,000.00? Pretty steep price to pay for correcting a problem we didn't even create, if you ask me.

So this is what I've been doing instead of crafting. Mind you, I had considered doing something creative, namely folding each paper in these documents into an origami crane before delivering them to the land use office, because the Japanese say that if you fold 1,000 origami cranes and then make a wish, your wish will come true. I used to think this saying was just a way for Japanese parents to keep their kids busy, but now I think this is actually an elegant analogy of the bureaucratic process that has become corrupted into a fable over time.

Maybe that's also why Japanese people use paper as a building material, as they figure they will just cut through the middle man. If it didn't rain so much around here, I might be tempted to do the same.

Hexagon Revamp and Half Hexagon Basics

by Kelly


Half hexagons are actually not hard at all.

The trick is to realize that you can't just divide the hexagon in half, that is, make 3 pairs of 2 cluster stitches, because if you do, you're trying to crochet into side spaces that don't exist.

See where the pen is pointing in the picture above? When you make a half hexagon, the spaces between clusters are what you're trying to create, because that's what you're crocheting into on each round. If that still seems a little mind boggling, then just follow the pattern below, and it will make more sense.


I adapted the hexagon pattern from One Loop Short, and here's what I did:

Half Hexagon Recipe

Special stitches Cl St = Cluster Stitch: YO and pull a loop through ring, YO and pull through 2 loops on hook (3 times), YO and pull through all 4 loops on hook.

1. Ch. 5 and join with a sl. stitch to form a ring.

2. Ch. 3, dc in ring, *(Ch2, yo and pull a loop through, [3 loops on hook], yo and pull through 2 loops [2 loops on hook], yo and pull a loop through [4 loops on hook], yo and pull through 2 loops [3 loops on hook], yo and pull through all 3 loops on hook), repeat from * once more, then ch. 3 and dc into ring. End color.

3. Join new color, Ch. 3, dc into the first cluster, ch2, (yo and pull a loop through, yo and pull through 2 loops) twice, yo and pull through all 3 loops, ch2, cl st in same space, ch2, work two cluster stitches in the next ch. 2 space, ch. 2, work one cluster in next space, then ch.3 and dc into the same space.

4. Join new color, Ch. 3, work 2 dc in same space. *(Work 3 dc in next space. In next space, work 3 dc, ch. 2, 3 dc). Repeat from * once more, then 3dc in next space, 3 dc in last space. 

Finish off and weave in all those dangly ends. 

If you try this and find a problem, please let me know in the comments and I'll correct the pattern. Hopefully it's okay, though.

Oh, and here's a picture of the finished afghan.

Now all I need is a border. (*Sigh*) It's always something, isn't it?

Flowers

by Kelly

We interrupt our regularly scheduled crafting post to bring you flowers.

These are the roses that grow in our front yard. The rose bush was given to us by my husband's uncle, a gardening fiend who also gave us two white concrete birdbaths and a small boulder that he was trying to get rid of.

Why did we accept the boulder? Well, because it was free, and I really didn't have much time to think about it. One day I heard a knock on the door, and when I opened it, there was my new FIL, wearing his impatient 'I'm about to do something rash' look, and he asked me "Do you want a boulder for your garden?" Naturally, I said yes. I've never been good under pressure.

Sometime I will have to share the story about how I acquired a whole flatbed trailer full of books at an auction for $2. It was the same kind of high pressure situation. Regardless, though, I think I would have said yes to the boulder just because of the magic words 'for your garden'.

Meanwhile, back to the roses. These are old roses, the kind that only bloom once a year, and they smell heavenly. I wish I could somehow add the scent to this post.

I've never had much luck with the new hybrid tea roses, but I can grow old roses like crazy. My husband says that it's because they tend to be thorny and difficult to live with, much like me. And then, just when I'm about to give him my best thorny look, he adds, 'and beautiful'.

Which, ha, isn't true, but it's a great line, isn't it?

Dimension's Cross Stitch Kit Review

by Kelly

All cross stitch kits have a few things in common - one or two embroidery needles, a graphed pattern to follow, a piece of fabric, and floss.

I usually choose kits from a company called Dimensions. Now, in general I don't have much brand loyalty - I tend to buy for different reasons. But for cross stitch kits, I always look at Dimensions first, and here's why.


First of all, they chose beautiful images to turn into kits. Here are two of my favorites:

Midnight Dance via Amazon

via Dimensions site

Secondly, their kits are never boring to work. Now, having said that, if the idea of sewing hundreds or thousands of tiny colored x's onto a piece of fabric to make an image makes you shudder, these kits still aren't for you.
But if you're crazy like me, and find that kind of thing fun and worthwhile, then imagine combining different colors of floss together in your needle to get a unique variegated look, or learning how to make velvety dark shadows with four strands of black floss, or adding French knots and lazy daisy stitches onto a cross stitched background to create a patch of flowers.

Also, they're great quality for the money. I've completed somewhere between ten or fifteen of these kits, and I've never been disappointed. I've also never run out of floss, which is a good thing, because they dye their own. If you do run out, they provide a way to order more of that color. Of course then there might be problems with dye-lots, and that could be a huge issue if you're trying to finish a half completed kit. Luckily, I've always had floss left over when I'm finished.

And lastly, since they have kits for all levels, from beginner to expert, as I learned new things I've always been able to find a Dimensions kit that was interesting and challenging. Whether or not I will ever take on one of their really complicated kits (like Ballerina Dreams), that's another story.

For now, I'm back to crocheting. But that smaller kit below would be cute to gift to my mom, since she loves butterflies. Hmm....

via Dimensions site

Crochet Hexagons Continued

by Kelly

Work continues on my hexagon flower blanket. The free pattern that I'm using can be found at One Loop Short.

Please forgive the backdrop of 1970's orange shag carpeting. We're renting.

I scammed that lovely yarn from Donna's stash. She didn't seem to mind, as she was just gifted three large plastic bags full of yarn from Stephanie. So really, I guess I actually scammed it from Steph. So confusing.

On another note, our camera is back from the repair shop and works much better than it has in quite a while. Yay! I'm so happy to have a camera again! Here's a gratuitous shot of one of our neighbors, just because.

We call this little guy 'the weathervane' because he sometimes goes up to the very peak of the shed and sits there for quite a while, looking around...first to the left...then to the right...

The Two Year Cross Stitch Project

by Kelly

I have finally, finally finished it. I started this project way back before I even learned how to knit or crochet, so you can imagine how happy I am that it's finally finished.

This is a kit from Dimensions, called Garden Door. I customized it a little, but the changes were very minor. All I did was use different colors in certain places. And since I have a super abundance of extra embroidery floss on hand, it wasn't like I had to go shopping for those extra skeins of floss.

Here's the original, so you can see what it's supposed to look like.

I changed the flowers in the left corner to Black-Eyed Susans, changed the ribbon on the hat to yellow, and changed the kitty to look like our late cat, who was always outside sleeping in the garden somewhere. Or at least, if he wasn't in our garden, he was in a our neighbor's.

I'm really happy with how it turned out, but mostly I'm happy that it's finished, washed and ironed, and ready to be stored until I can find a mat and frame and all that.

Whew! Now, where did I put that knitting...