LOLOL Yarn: A time for this and a time for that

Buffy, you know that lolol is internet speak for "laughing out loud on line," but I like to think of it as Lots of Little Old Lady yarn. I find LOLOL yarn at garage sales, yard sales, thrift shops and on eBay.

It was on eBay that I hit my first bonanza. I found over six pounds of wool needlepoint- and crewel-weight yarns in short, cut pieces for the very small sum of $9. Or maybe it was nine pounds of wool yarn for $6. It was tangled and messy but it contained every color in the crayon box and a great many more. I spent days sorting it out and making it neat. I wish that I had photos of it.

But here's an image of another lot I bought on eBay.

I can't tell you how much I paid, but I always try to keep my bid well below $10 a pound. 

Some of these needlepoint yarns are in 40-yard skeins, and that's always great to knit with, but most are cut lengths that needlepointers use. A few are almost 2 yards long, but most are 28 inches long, and shorter. These lengths are almost perfect for the multicolored Kaffe Fassett coats knitted in intarsia. Kaffe's patterns often specify the yarn needed thusly:  7 pounds of yarn, one-third light tones, one-third medium tones and one-third dark tones. You get the picture. I can knit a coat like the Kaffe's Jug Coat for $50. (Well, it would have been $50, but I decided to add three 25-gram skeins of super expensive silky yarn at $20/skein.)

The Long Leaf Coat is coming in at quite a bit more. I started it just as the Rowan Scottish Tweed yarns were being discontinued, and I found many (but not all) of the yarns specified in the Sticka med Kaffe book at half price. You know how I love a bargain.

Nonetheless, I'm using this bag of LOLOL yarn, too, on the LLC.

So Kaffe's Long Leaf Coat won't be $50, but it's not going to break the bank, either.

Your Kaffe Romeo & Juliet Coat is quiet a different affair. I can see why you paid so much for your seven pounds of heritage yarns. Not only have those original yarns been off the market for twenty or more years, your coat is continuous, coordinated stripes of color, and mixing bits of this and that would give it another look altogether -- not what you would want if you really liked that 30-year-old red, red coat pattern. Plus, long stripes do not call for 28-inch pieces of yarn! Not at all!

So there's a time for LOLOL yarn, and there's a time to splurge.