Saturday, May 23, 2009

Garage Sale Score for my Business!

I headed up to the Riverside Avenue Christian Church yard sale today and found a few things for the kids, like they need anything! LOL There was this activity table thing that was brand new...air hockey, paddle ball, checkers, chess, etc, etc, etc for $35. Also picked up some movies and a few books. Ethan bought a spider man web shooting thing that lasted 5 minutes by the time he came home. Oh and I picked up one of those marble game building things for $3.

But the score for my business was a serger! Yes, I already have a serger but I have been living in fear that something bad was going to happen to it. It's been acting finnicky but I can't stop serging long enough to take it in for service. I have my heart set on an industrial serger ($1200!) but I'm not quite there yet. I do have some money from recent sales, thank goodness, but I'm hesitant to spend all or most of it just yet.

So this beauty was marked "$50 - never been used." That peaked my interest so I opened the box and pulled it out. This action seemed to draw attention to what I was doing. Ladies, potential competition, were eyeing me. I knew the minute I walked away from the box, that someone would swoop in and take it! But still, $50 for an old musty serger? I couldn't quite bring myself to spend that much so I put everything back. At this point, I saw that there was ANOTHER price written on a different flap that had been hidden when the box was closed. $20 Heck yeah!

I took the box up to the 'cashier' and asked which price was valid. He told me that the old price was probably from when the owner tried to sell it at a yard sale. Their price was $20. So I paid for my purchases and headed home happily, hoping the thing would work.

The machine was immaculate. I rethreaded it. It threads slightly differently then my 2 previous sergers but I figured it out. The first stitching was less then desirable but after adjusting the tensions, it eventiually produced beautiful results, better then my current serger, I think. The negatives? It's considerably SLOWER which is not a good thing. It also doesn't have a thread cutter and it doesn't have as many options for changing thread length and stitch differrential. But, for $20???? Oh yeah, I'm happy, very happy!

Now I can take my main machine in for a spa vacation at the repair store and still be productive while it's gone.

I have been busy making unpaper towels and filling orders. Here's what they look like before I serge them. At one point I'm going to sit down and figure out exactly how many I've sold between etsy and the Riverside Arts Market. It's um... a lot! And my body feels it. Making these little cloths uses muscles that I never knew I had before. My collarbone hurts! I'm pretty sure it's from the repetitive cutting because that's when I feel it.

I received a box of yummy flannel for flannel cloths. 44 yards, I think. I think this will be my last flannel purchase...at least for a while. My flannel cloths just don't move as quickly as the unpaper towels. I think I would be wiser to have more of my best seller on hand.

2 comments:

Hills N Valleys said...

What a find! I love those patterns on the flannel you have.

Anonymous said...

It's so nice to hear about theneat things you're able to do because of your success.

Katie