YARD SALE ADVENTURES
i am notoriously bad at going outside. there are a few reasons for this - chiefly my chronic pain and inability to drive - but it's something that makes me fucking crazy when i spend too long dwelling on it. that being said, there's been a ton of yard sales in my area over the past couple months, and i've had a lot of fun combing through them with my mom when we get the chance.
i don't mean to brag, but there have been some real winners over here. ever heard of a little thing called beanie babies? maybe even neopets? uh, yeah, they're niche, i wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard of them (EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS PARAGRAPH IS SARCASTIC)
in all honesty, most of the sales we've been to have turned out to be busts. i did want to show off some of the cool stuff i got though
SOMETHING ELSE, TECHNICALLY
i know the intro implies plushies and i'm getting to that i promise. but the first thing i actually got from one of these outings was free scrap yarn from my grandma's friend. you might remember the crochet article. it didn't stick as a lasting hobby as much as i was hoping, but it is still very much something i like to practice in some capacity. granted... i have a really, really hard time following patterns for anything involving crocheting in the round. i fucking hate magic circles
so the obvious solution, of course, was not to follow patterns at all.
was this a good idea? well, at least it got me crocheting again. it was honestly a HUGE weight off my shoulders the moment i made the realization that i could basically freehand it all as long as i had the basic techniques down. i still need guides for more complicated stuff, but the bulk of amigurumi is single crochet and sometimes a little sewing, both of which i am quite comfortable with.
(it is worth noting, however, that the grey ball above was originally supposed to be a plushie-sized scarf before it got monstrously lopsided and i improvised when i ran out of yarn. take that as you will.)
here are the other guys i made out of the scrap yarn. the second one is supposed to have legs but i still haven't finished them because i am lazy.
THE SPOILS
as you might've expected, i've mostly been looking out for plushies and the like. luckily, toys are definitely not uncommon at yard sales - though i do have to be at least a little discerning with the stuff i take home. maybe not if i had infinite money... or space.
these guys technically weren't bought together, but the sales they came from were literally side-by-side so it basically counts. ants (the anteater) was a HUGE find for me, not for being particularly rare but because i'd been looking for him for years but was not willing to shell out like twenty bucks to buy him off amazon with shipping. the other one, chompy, isn't one of the original beanie babies - he's a "beanie baby 2.0" - but he was a dollar and i thought he was cute.
we also found a couple of these guys in different places. there's also a pink kacheek, uh... somewhere, but it got lost somewhere downstairs and i don't really know where it could be. the grarrl and meerca both came unopened in the original mcdonalds toy packaging, which i thought was cool. the meerca was a particularly pleasant surprise because the very first neopet i remember adopting as a kid was a yellow meerca - or maybe a green korbat, actually? i remember struggling to draw a korbat in a kindergarten for first grade art class, but i definitely did also pick a meerca because i thought it looked the most like pikachu. maybe if i made fewer than nineteen accounts i could recall better.
anyway, the blumaroo is my favorite out of these because of his kind smile.
THE BIG ONE
have you ever gotten really lucky at a yard sale? like, really lucky? i have. i'd like to introduce you to the real star of this article:
on the way home from work a while ago my mom asked if i wanted to check out a yard sale she saw that morning. sure, i don't see why not. i've got nothing better to do. maybe i'll grab something cool
one. hunded. sixty. beanie babies. more beanie babies than i've seen in my god damn life for a whopping twenty-five dollars. impulsive? yeah, obviously. financially unwise? uh... maybe. probably. but oh my god, how could i possibly pass that up? being honest, it was definitely a decision influenced in no small part by my recent fixation on custom upcycled plush. it's a concept i really love and would very much like to try out myself, but given my weird perception of plushie feelings i seriously think i'd need to make, like, medical consent forms if i ever want to experiment with them. i'll think about it some other time. probably.
there are some really, really good ones in here. i'm glad there's a lot of "weirdos" - as in, more unconventional animals like the chameleons and invertebrates. as i was going through them proper the first time i tried sorting them into a few rough groups (classic bears, beanbags, birds, dogs/cats, hooved animals, etc), but it basically fell apart by the end as i ran out of space and kept running into "where do i put this" type beanies. there were also a couple christianity and USA circlejerk bears in there - i'm not the biggest fan of those, but i'll take what i can get.
these were my favorites out of the whole bunch. i probably could have narrowed it down further - i like scorch and pinchers quite a lot more than the two normal bears, for example - but all of these stood out to me in some way that felt worthwhile to point out. the only reason the top bunch is separate from the bigger group is because i accidentally left them out of the first photo and really did not have the energy to set them all up again for a second take. hell, there's even a few more that i could have included if i really wanted. claude is probably the one i actually have the most concrete sticking point for; he was a childhood beanie baby that i lost about a decade ago, and i've wanted him back for a very, very long time.
AND THESE GUYS
i like almost forgot about these two because they're such outliers compared to the rest. my mom actually got these for me while she was out because she thought i would like them. this was not an incorrect assumption. the bee is from aurora's rolly pet line, but it might be an older version? there's plenty of photos of this one in ebay listings and from 3rd-party sellers but the one on aurora's site itself lacks blush and has much longer antennas. interesting.
as for the other one... uhm. i don't know what that is. that's not at all meant to imply i don't like it, but i'm confident in saying it's definitely one of the stranger things i now own. i'm strongly inclined to say it's probably handmade, given the lack of any tags and the fact that i can't find even the faintest traces of it online. i'm, like, kind of entranced by it, honestly. i can't even tell entirely what it is. it's pretty obviously supposed to be a kangaroo, what with the pouch and all, but the bright green body and flat-but-elongated face really scream alien to me more than anything. an alien that is also a sweet old aunt or grandma, with the hat and purse and all. and the cat.
the cat can be taken out of the pouch, too, incase you were wondering.
all in all, i am very happy with all of these finds. it feels nice being able to rehome older plushies. yard sales are probably going to become more scarce around here as temperatures drop, and i'd sure like to look around a little more if i get the chance, but i'm quite satisfied even if i don't. other than that... i have a couple other blog entries i've been tinkering with on-and-off these past couple weeks. hopefully i can get at least one of them out a little sooner than usual. right now though i'm going to go eat an orange
