Hidden Treasures

I love a garage sale.

I hope everyone has had the experience of discovering an unexpected treasure after pulling over “just to look” at what’s being offered at a neighborhood sale. Yard sales, estate sales, rummage sales, whatever you call them, when I see those posterboard signs stuck in the ground with the big arrows pointing the way, the pull is strong.

Years ago, I heard a story of a woman who discovered several black trash bags full of expensive hand-dyed yarn at a garage sale. She bought them all for less than $20 or something, because the seller didn’t know what they had and just wanted to get rid of it. It was an epic find. I still chase that.

There have been seasons of life when I’ve lived in or near towns that had neighborhood or city-wide yard sale days. Joy and trumpets!

The past few months have been especially interesting in the sales acquisitions department. We’ve come across some amazingly cool stuff at some estate sales, including a beautiful spinning wheel and a little folding table that fits perfectly in our tiny house.

We’ve also come across a lot of junk. And we’ve brought it home with us.

Yes, I’ve entered a whole new realm of garage saling, and I’m calling it my farm construction era. This kind of shopping requires a complete rework of my approach to garage sales.

I am not looking for “good as new.” I am looking for “can this become a fence?” Not “does this have all its parts” but “will this hold a screw?” We’re not asking, “do you have anything in 5T boys?” We’re asking, “Is that your trash pile? Could I look through that?” (Seriously, we did that at a business’s “garage sale” and picked up a million pounds of concrete pavers.)

It takes a different kind of vision and creativity to look at the offerings at a garage or estate sale and imagine how you could repurpose them. I found myself considering how difficult it would be to put wheels on the bottom of the posts of a pretty cast iron twin bed headboard and turn it into a gate.

We didn’t get it. The sheep might get ideas and start demanding better treatment. But I love what I’m learning: treasures (and useful ones!) are everywhere.

I was reminded of this during the funeral I attended this week. The departed man’s son-in-law told a story about his father-in-law’s habitual behavior while on ski vacations. Every time this man would go up the ski lift, he’d get into a friendly conversation with the other people on the lift. He’d ask where they were from, what they did for a living, how long they were staying, and generally be his friendly, “never met a stranger” self for the few minutes they shared the lift. By the end of the day, he’d have a host of stories about the many people he’d met and the places they’d come from. He’d share them with his family like the fascinating encounters he truly believed them to be.

Yes, the card-carrying Official Introvert recoiled a little at the thought of this behavior, but really, his approach to his fellow humans was so beautiful. He communicated such value to each person he encountered, as though each was a treasure to be discovered.

I thought of that the next day as I started meeting with a new-to-me group, and I liked how it changed my focus a little from my normal “this is all new” nerves to “I wonder who I’ll discover here” curiosity.

It popped up again later when I was talking with an old friend and I learned that someone I last knew as a little boy has grown up to become a trained sheep shearer.

I thought of it again yesterday at the barn when Greg and I were salvaging some bits of fencing to construct the ram pens. I was completely stuck and stumped trying to budge a piece of metal. I didn’t have the hand strength to move it and had no idea what to try. Greg pulled out tricks he’d learned working beside his father and brother for years that wouldn’t have occurred to me if I’d had the whole week to work it out.

I love how the story at the funeral is teaching me to see the people around me differently.

We have so much to learn from one another.

I’ve finished the knitting for the Kool Aid dyed blocks for the Beast to Blanket class project blanket sample I’ll use for the convention booth. I’m looking forward to the assembly process as a step toward perhaps providing something for someone else to discover and, hopefully, treasure.

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week!

The winning question was: Your thoughts have my mental wheels going for an upcoming issue of my newsletter. I’m considering writing about how our sometimes-incorrect views of people based on our assumptions or misinformation impact how we interact with and lead others. Do you see that parallel you observed with sheep and dogs in our human relationships too?

Absolutely, and I think you should run with this idea in your writing.

I will just highlight one example that I discovered with the Beast to Blanket classes.

I really thought that I was going to face a huge hurdle convincing 10–12-year-old boys that knitting was acceptable. I didn’t dare hope they would think it was cool. Because of that, I designed the class with lots of building and toolmaking and engineering to try and capture their interest in between the times when they had to endure the spinning and weaving and knitting.

Boy, was I wrong, and shame on me! Not only have the boys been some of the most excited and energetic (and prolific!) students, but they’ve been SO proud to show friends and family members their projects at Family Night celebrations.

The takeaway lesson for me is to be wary of assumptions and lean more into curiosity about the people (and animals!) we encounter!

Greg’s Questions for This Week:

Here are the questions up for the vote this week. I’ll answer the winner in the next newsletter. (As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: So far in our new “farm construction era” what’s your favorite hidden treasure we’ve found?

Question 2: What has surprised you the most since you’ve started leaning into curiosity more (even when it gives your introverted self a bad case of mental hives)?

Question 3: Do you really think it would have taken you a week to figure out my trick of whacking the stuck fence gate hinge against a big hunk of scrap iron to break it loose? Based on your last newsletter, I now realize that this approach may be the ram in me coming out…

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J