I don’t know how I first heard of the Craft Swap Craft Cville was throwing.  The point is, I heard of it.  And was more than a little excited.  Swap your craft supplies that are just sitting there for ones you might use? Yes, please.

I have a basket full of yarn I have inherited.  I swore when I started knitting that I would never buy yarn without a project in mind, that I would never have a ‘stash’.  Over time, generous friends have given me yarn they thought I could use as they cleaned out their stashes.  Then Eddie found two large boxes of yarn just sitting there on the curb for the taking when the students were moving out last year and brought them to the front porch of his favorite local knitter.  I have slowly gotten rid of a large portion of that yarn, but I still had a basket full just sitting there, some of which was nice yarn, but not necessarily in my color range.  The swap seemed like the perfect way to turn that into something I might actually use.  I headed out with a decent sized bag of yarn and a few craft books that upon a quick inspection, left me sort of meh.

The swap was held over at HackCville on Elliewood Avenue Tuesday evening.  Amber, the organizer, did a fantastic job with it.  There were spots for books, yarn, fabric, and so forth.  You dumped your items and then proceeded to rifle through to see what others left.  Genius.

I scored:

This craft carrier that my friend Lise had in her hand.  I walked up and was going on and on about how that was so awesome, I was slightly jealous of her score when somehow, she ended up offering it to me.  She knew it was a score and was grabbing it for her husband, but I think in my description of how something like that would be so dreamy to carry my knitting projects in, because my current dump it all in a bag was a disorganized mess and kept resulting in me breaking my really nice, expensive wooden needles was so passionate and descriptive, she just handed it to me.

Thank you Lise.  My broken knitting needles thank you too.

All those glorious pockets just waiting to hold my knitting gear, my hand lotion, my chapstick, my glasses.  No more jumble in the bags.  The whole family was pretty darn tooting impressed. High fives from the entire clan.

Three new craft books – including Craft Activism which is great on several different levels.  It includes this pattern for a housedress, inspired by little old Italian ladies.

I think I need to make myself one or three.   I see a change in the uniform on the horizon….

But probably not using the fabric I brought home after saying I wasn’t going to swap for any new fabric.  When you look at a piece of fabric and see a new skirt for yourself, or a new dress, or hey, it’s orange terrycloth and surely that’s good for something, well, you find yourself bringing home fabric.

I also grabbed this tub of foam stickers that was an interesting mix of glitter encrusted stickers and folksy hand drawn looking critters.  My initial thought was that they could be great for the Unicorns, however, when I brought them home and was showing the bucket off to Edie she gave me a look that forced me to admit that I had my own ideas on some of those stickers and given my inability to share my toys at times, maybe I didn’t entirely grab them for the Unicorns.

My favorite score, outside of the new craft tote though was this:

A pile of black cotton yarn, enough for a good sized project.  Anyone want to take a wild guess what that’s going to end up being?

I walked away with a few other odds & ends, but best of all, I walked away with loads of inspiration.  Craft Cville has some fantastic things in the works – a monthly craft night, a spring craft show among them – and seems to be a great resource for all things crafty around town – a niche that has sorely needed to be filled.  If you live in Charlottesville and are looking for fellow crafters, classes or anything else crafty, get on their mailing list. (Right HERE on their website.)

While we are on the subject of swaps, Cville Swaps is planning another food swap on Saturday, November 16 at The Whiskey Jar.  Details are on our Facebook page and Eventbrite.  We are partnering with other groups for some fantastic swaps in December & January that I’m pretty excited about – but most exciting of all,  in the midst of trying to put all this together along with running the PTO and well, life,  a friend stepped up to help out with Cville Swaps.  Kathy has started a twitter account for us and is working on a new website.  After two years of being a one woman show, to see someone pick this up and run with it leaves me feeling all warm & tingly.  Thank you Kathy from the bottom of my heart.

Now if I could just get someone to do this with some of my other projects so I can make myself a new housedress and start that black yarn knitting project.