Webs Tent Sale Means Yarn Adventure
Webs is every knitters’ idea of heaven with a wide variety of yarns and brands including a great selection of related tools like knitting needles and looms. In addition to the quantity discount, they have a warehouse filled with discounted items and cones of fiber. For me, it’s a treasure hunt. Being fortunate to have a fiber-friendly husband, I tend to make an annual pilgrimage as part of a trip further north during the summer.
This year, my friend Amanda persuaded me to join her for the Webs’ Annual Tent Sale. She didn’t have to work very hard to convince me to meet her for a girls weekend of yarn-related road trips and knitting. Since Amanda got to last year’s sale mid-afternoon by which point the merchandise was well picked over, we left at the crack of dawn to get to the sale early. Webs had taken over a nearby parking lot and there was lots of activity under the tent. There were so many people that we had to wait to get containers to collect the items we wanted. The people at the tables were at least three people deep debating the virtues of the various fibers and brands. In addition to yarn there were carryalls and needles (which were a bargain at $1 and $2 a pair!). Fortunately, it was cloudy which kept the heat down.
At one point, I spied a couple of cartons with a big crowd. It turned out to be free fiber! I got some wonderful white cotton with fushia rayon wrapped around it as well as some rust and baby blue ribbon. It was the idea of free that drove me since I stopped knitting with ribbon ages ago. I went through the various tables at least three times before making my decisions. The bags of Noro for $49.95 kept drawing me over. There was an especially wonderful turquoise, green and yellow blend. Amanda persuaded me that I still had a bag of Noro Silver Thaw from two years ago so…No Noro for me! The tent line took about a half hour. Part of the problem was that there were several yarns that were mismarked in the computer system.
Then we went inside where Amanda was on a mission for some Cascade 220 for a special project as well as some sock yarn for a friend who had to work. Not one to pass up the opportunity to drool over Web’s inventory, I meandered through the warehouse. There were some wonderful treasures but I restrained myself and waited on line. Inside, there were four separate check out lines that snaked through the store! It took another hour to get checked out inside.
Outside, there were some local purveyors of fiber and animals. It’s like a mini-fiber festival.
We left with some great yarn buys and our stashes happily enhanced! As Amanda pointed out we extended our lives by increasing our stash. Between keeping us calmer and augmenting our SABLE, buying yarn is a great life insurance policy.
Submitted by Knitted Yarns Editor-in-Chief