One of my absolute favourite geek-out things to do is hunt down second hand magic ingredients for my textiles projects, both online and off. I can literally spend hours with about five different ebay tabs open, diving between bidding wars over a few unwanted half-finished cones of sparkly cotton and somebody’s old stash of half-dressed Barbie dolls (this was legitimately for a textiles project at university. Honest). It’s almost more exciting than making the thing itself - I recently hunted down two cones of barely used neon yellow yarns online and I almost cried when I opened the package, I’ve yet to match that happiness to anything I’ve actually produced with them.
There are a lot of advantages to using other peoples’ jilted leftovers: it’s generally much cheaper, unless you’re used to buying wholesale of course, but for the average at-home knitting enthusiast or designer maker you’d be shelling out more for ten balls of brand new yarn from, let’s say, John Lewis, than you would be for the same amount of ebay’s finest. There’s also something wonderful about the fact that you don’t know what you’re getting when you step into that charity shop or start typing in that search bar - you can’t plan what kind of fabric or embroidery floss or vintage lace you’ll stumble across, it’s going to be a lovely surprise which I think makes it ten times more fun. And to top it all off, you’re not being wasteful and you can feel comfortably smug knowing that you’re doing your bit to save the planet. As somebody relatively new to this kind of material sourcing I’m far from declaring myself an expert, but I’ve made a little list, kind of like a tip list for myself to refer back to but that any readers can use too if you fancy giving it a go, that details the process and what I always watch out for.
- Check the product description. If you’re buying online, you don’t have the advantage of getting to prod and poke at that flowery curtain you plan on turning into a cute 60s mini dress, and when it comes to textiles the quality and feel is so damn important, as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried knitting with metal needles and 100% acrylic pound shop yarn (it literally squeaks). Especially if you’re buying a mixed bundle of yarn and it’s pretty cheap, there’s a good chance a lot of it will be pretty bad quality acrylic or polyester mixes, so it’s best to double check. Keep an eye out for quantity, lengths/widths, weights and thickness as well.
- Don’t set out looking for something specific. There is always a chance that if you’re after a particular shade of purple velvet dress to work your sweet DIY magic on that you will find exactly that shining out from the window of the first charity shop you come to. But it’s not likely. It’s much more fun going into this sort of thing with an open mind, and let all the weird flotsam and jetsam you find inform the process, rather than picking it to fit a particular design. It’s also more challenging that way.
- If you get caught up in an ebay bidding war, wait until the very end to place your bid. Really, this is just ebay 101. It’s a bit cheeky, but the earlier you bid, the earlier you set the bar. If there’s three or four of you placing your bids every five minutes then the price is going to shoot up much quicker, whereas if you hide in the shadows until the others have done the hard work for you and dive in with ten seconds to spare, chances are it won’t cost you as much. Recently I was sat in the cinema with my phone waging money wars over a jumper that had only minutes to go and would probably have been better off just waiting it out til the very end. I learned my lesson anyway.
- Don’t get carried away! It really is addictive finding a bargain, and you’ll understand if you’re also prone to overbuying things like reduced food at the supermarket or sale clothes: it’s so stupidly exciting finding cheap things that you end up spending more money than you wanted to without realising it. And I’m not going to pretend it’s just me because it is most definitely almost everyone out there. Keep yourself in check, buy things that you know you’ll use and not just any old rubbish for the sake of it.
