That's some OLD yarn!

[mva5493]

I have some sayelle yarn as well as wintuk and some of those old brands. My mother buys me yarn at yard sales and flea markets and one day she brought me a 33 gallon trash bag full. most of it was already rolled into balls but you can tell by the color and texture that it has some age to it. There were a few labels and I guess kmart used to sell a lot of yarn because the labels were from there and ben franklin.

I also have an elderly neighbor who knits as well as crochet (mostly knit), who has given me lots of her stash that she says she will never use.

 

The old yarn must hold up pretty well, because it doesn't show any signs of wear, and when I see those old pea green and bright orange and brown throws in thift stores the are in fairly good condition.

[Selune]

I was going through old yarn yesterday and sorting it into tubs. I heard clinking. Inside an old skein of yarn I bought off ebay were three ceramic animal figures. Now, a hidden stash of cash would have been much better, but it was a very interesting and unexpected find.

[The_Virginia_Hooker]

I remember the yarn isle at Kmart Huge amounts of yarn, so many colors.

[LaVonneK]

Growing up we refered to T.G. & Y as Toys, Games, and Yo Yo's.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh my gosh:eek . Some of you are making me feel "old":lol . Some of you mentioned K-Mart, Sayelle yarn, and Wintuk yarn. Back in the late 70's, when I was in my 20's. The place to get yarn was K-Mart(Sayelle) and we had another store called T.G.& Y.( I forgot what the initials stood for), and they had "Wintuk" yarn. Would you believe that I still have some of that yarn, mostly Sayelle in both solid and variegated colors. When my oldest was just a baby, I crocheted her a granny square blanket using Sayelle variegated pink. It's a real pretty yarn, the colors in it were brite pink, light pink and white. Last year I was trying to use up the yarn, I made some crochet butterfly magnets. When my daughter came over, she saw the butterfly's on the ****., she said, "Oh how cute!". I asked her if she wanted them, she said yes, then I told her the story about the yarn. I think back then when I was crocheting, I was crocheting "Mile-a-Minute" afghans. As Bob Hope would say, "Thanks for the Memories...... Some of you maybe asking yourself Bob who:think :lol

[Elle]

QUOTE: "I've gotten Sayelle yarn in thrift stores and garage sales. I wonder how much yarn made in the seventies is still around in unused skeins. Every once in a while I'll come across some in harvest gold, burnt orange or that pea green color. Now doesn't that bring back some memories. "

 

Yes, my mother use to crochet everyone an afghan in those colors. And amazingly they matched everyones decor

 

It seemed like every afghan that my mom and my aunt crocheted, whether it was for their own homes or someone else's, was harvest gold, avocado green, burnt orange and eggshell. Sometimes, apparently, they would get a wild hair and throw in coffee brown! They would finish whatever they were working on, get together over coffee to ooh and ahh over it, and head to either K-Mart or the local Five and Ten to get more yarn, and they would invariably come home with THE SAME COLORS! Sometimes they made ripples, sometimes they made granny squares, but it was always those same colors! And, like you said, they matched everyone's homes! It was amazing!

[Real Deal]

Oh yes. I was just going off to live on my own in those days. I couldn't find a waste paper basket in anything but that awful green.

 

Worse yet ~ I had an orange bedspread and curtains. They were hideous. I dislike orange to this day.

[paperdoll]

I have a few partial skeins of sayelle and wintuk yarn, also some yarn from Kmart, I bought from Woolworths when I first started to crochet. I bought the earth tone colors. I feel so old when I think back to those times.

[crochettreasures]

I probably have yarn that is way older than me that was handed down from my grand family members. I have some from woolworths at 10 cents per skein. some from Ames and some other stores. Luckily the colors are very similar to what we use today!

[LI Roe]

I'm back again. Just was going through my stash of yarn looking for a certain color and came across more older yarn. I found Caron Sayelle 6, Contessa by MH, Joy by Lion Brand, Cherish yarn, Pamela by Lion Brand, Shelty yarn, Columbia Minerva yarn and some older mohairy type (yet machine washable) by Unger. Oh and some Lee Wards yarn. And some not labeled with any name (just a wrapper with instructions on it).

 

It is amazing to see what was out there years ago.

 

LI Roe

[harmonise]

:lol:lol

 

I brought home a giant granny rectangle afghan from my gramma's house after she passed away a couple of years ago and guess what colors it is!!!!! It looks practically new, guess some people just get locked into colors

 

:lol:lol

[frugalmel]

It seemed like every afghan that my mom and my aunt crocheted, whether it was for their own homes or someone else's, was harvest gold, avocado green, burnt orange and eggshell. Sometimes, apparently, they would get a wild hair and throw in coffee brown! They would finish whatever they were working on, get together over coffee to ooh and ahh over it, and head to either K-Mart or the local Five and Ten to get more yarn, and they would invariably come home with THE SAME COLORS! Sometimes they made ripples, sometimes they made granny squares, but it was always those same colors! And, like you said, they matched everyone's homes! It was amazing!

 

My mom had a ripple afghan in brown, orange, gold and eggshell. I hated that thing! lol. It was so scratchy and I didn't like the colors. I still don't really like those colors to this day. Of course, the afghan matched the two gold armchairs next to the couch, and the gold carpet. (shudder) lol

[The_Virginia_Hooker]

Funny how that one color is called 'gold.' To me, that color resembles something you find in a baby's diaper .

[Real Deal]

:lol Oh yeah, the gold carpet! My parents had one in the livingroom. If we got a stain on it, it would never come out, no matter what we tried to remove it with. The only solution was to cover a stain with a throw rug and they were mostly ugly then too. What could all of those manufacturers have been thinking? Nobody liked the colors, but they just kept cranking them out anyway.

[cjansen]

OK you can all holler my OCD is coming out...

I have a ton of K-mart yarn I'm even old enough to have bought some if it new.

 

but I looked up TG&Y and Wikipedia say...

TG&Y was a five and dime, or variety store, chain in the United States. The chain was named for its three founders: Rawdon E. Tomlinson, Enoch L. "Les" Gosselin, and Raymond A. Young. The initials were ordered according to the age of the three, with Tomlinson being the oldest. Founded in 1935, the chain was headquartered in Oklahoma City. At its peak, there were more than 900 stores.[1][2]

 

It was acquired by McCrory Stores in 1986, when it had about 720 stores. Shortly after McCrory's purchased TG&Y, that company cut over 8,000 employees and closed 205 stores, including 23 in its former home-state of Oklahoma.[3] It did business under the TG&Y Family Center and later TG&Y Dollar and Aim for the Best and Dollar-T names as well. Toward the end of its successful years, the chain used the advertising slogan, "Your best buy is at TG&Y."

 

In 2001, the chain filed bankruptcy and eventually all stores were closed.

 

Now we know!

[The_Virginia_Hooker]

Oh, Lordy, McCrory lol. I remember that's where Grandma got her 2.5 oz of kelly green RH to create the braided legs on the two stuffed frog toys she made for me.

[7pawz]

I've gotten Sayelle yarn in thrift stores and garage sales. I wonder how much yarn made in the seventies is still around in unused skeins. Every once in a while I'll come across some in harvest gold, burnt orange or that pea green color. Now doesn't that bring back some memories.

 

 

:lol If you could see the yarn given to me which I finally had to box up and store in the attic (ran out of room in the bedrooms), I have plenty of unsused yarn from the 70's, 80's, 90's----much of it was given to me in order to CLEAR out so they could store MORE yarn! and this week, I should get more, one of the ladies went to HL and spent $200 on new yarn!--mostly RH & ILTY.

 

I started crocheting in the middle 70's, and I really liked the sayelle's, and I like a lot of the older colors,(mostly varigated--NO avacado), luckily most of the colors that I have are more in tune with today's colors, some of the the thread is still in great condition, may not be able to use it all, but I sure can plan:hook

Edited October 30, 2008 by 7pawz
addition

[Gran]

I was given some Jack Frost Wintuk Ombre recently. I was surprised to see how similar it looks to some current yarn colors. It'll make a nice, fun scarf.

[mescovedo]

One of my grandmother's customer brought me over a couple bags of yarn! Yay me! And a bag of fabric too. The yarn that was in it was really old too, some of that Sayelle brand and some from a brand called Spinnerin that I never heard of. And a bunch more that I hadn't heard of (I'm at work so I don't have it here). But they were all in really good condition and yarn is yarn - I can't say no to it! LOL!

[Trinket]

Several years ago, I was given a huge donation of yarn (no one wanted to store it and I said I would, turned out when I boxed it up, there were over 65 cartons of yarn) and Sayelle and Wintuk, was in there, along with Phentex, LionBrand Jiffy (very similar to what is being sold now), Lee Wards yarn, Love Knot and others that I can't remember offhand.

 

That brings back memories too.

 

LI Roe

 

Oh, I LOVE the Lee Ward's yarn. It's just got a texture I don't see in any yarns made these days. I wish I had more of it than I do. But I think I only have 1 skein left of white.

 

I was going through old yarn yesterday and sorting it into tubs. I heard clinking. Inside an old skein of yarn I bought off ebay were three ceramic animal figures. Now, a hidden stash of cash would have been much better, but it was a very interesting and unexpected find.

 

Now that you mention it, hiding money in yarn might be a good way to go if you're into hiding your money at home. Who would think to look there?

 

I was given some Jack Frost Wintuk Ombre recently. I was surprised to see how similar it looks to some current yarn colors. It'll make a nice, fun scarf.

 

My MIL gave me some yarn when we moved up here, and a skein of Jack Frost was in it. I think I ended up using the yarn for something, but I kept the wrapper because it had a pattern I wanted to try on it.

[crs5]

I have those brands, I went to a garage sale 2 months ago and the lady had a box full of yarn for $2.00 and it had those brands in there. My neighbor accross the street gave me a full bag of yarn that she didn't use anymore and that brand was also in there.

 

Carol:hook

 

I was feeling down yesterday, so my husband decided to stop by the flea market where I had spotted a few skeins of yarn before, but didn't look at it because we didn't really have money to be spending that day. He brought all of it back home with him last night, which did wonders to put me in a better mood!

 

But, WOW. That is some OLD yarn! A few of them are a brand called "Sayelle" (which apparently still exists based on a search I did). The rest of them just say they're knitting yarns, but I didn't see any brand names on them. They all came from K-Mart. From the date on the clearance sticker that was on one of them, it apparently was bought back around 1983.

 

Kinda seems a shame to use yarn that old! Oh, but I already have plans for it!

[Knit Happens]

I've still got some yarn from when I was 17; I'll be 49 next month!

[MaryPat]

I've gotten Sayelle yarn in thrift stores and garage sales. I wonder how much yarn made in the seventies is still around in unused skeins. Every once in a while I'll come across some in harvest gold, burnt orange or that pea green color. Now doesn't that bring back some memories.

 

Last year I married a widower and moved into his house. It was originally decorated in 1973 -- yes, all those wonderful colors of gold, orange, brown, and green are here. He doesn't want to update anything! The walls and baseboards and fixtures are all beige (with the original 1973 paint). The carpets are god-awful but were expensive so not worn. He keeps quoting stuff from the 70's as justification for not changing anything.

[Trinket]

You know, come to think of it, with the stash that I have, I'll bet I'll have some of the yarn that's hoarded away in my house for several years. I wonder if I'll ever be shocked to rummage in my stash one day 15 years from now and I find yarn that's from right now?

 

My husband will probably be distressed about it...

[Yarnluver]

A few months ago I went to a thrift store and came home with a bag containing several skeins of Sayelle yarn (and maybe other brands). At the time I bought it to make kitty blankets but the group that was forming for that fizzled out and I only used part of one skein to make towel toppers.

 

There is something that actually bothers me reading about all this old yarn. It is that many 'of us' are hoarding yarn just 'because' - with no particular plans for it - as if we were going to live forever and thus have the time to use it all, but the truth is we'll all very likely leave behind unfinished projects and tons of yarn behind. Then, those we leave behind who might not crochet or knit, will have to haul our "precious stash" to a thrift store or garage sale table. Also, considering the state of the present economy, I think we should all try harder to use up what we already have before buying more or at least give/exchange any of our own old yarn we still have no plans for.

[tnkycrochetnut]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. It really brings back memories. I know who Bob Hope is. Thanks for the memories. I learned how to crochet in the mid 70s. My Mom and oldest sister taught me. In those days we bought a lot of our yarn from Zayre's where I worked. Some also came from K-Mart. I had forgotten all about TG&Y stores. I can't remember the words the initials "were" supposed to stand for but it was something like this "T ___________, Guns, and Yo Yos." Funny someone mentioned about rolling up money and hiding it in a skein of yarn. I've done that. I got the idea from when I worked at Zayre's and management told us cashiers to squeeze items like skeins of yarn and soft items (blankets, sheets, etc.) that was done up in a package to make sure no items were hidden there. We were told not to be obvious in what we were doing but we were looking for any items that people were trying to steal by just buying a few things. So one day when I was at home and wanted to hide some extra cash I had on hand (in those days that was a rarity) I got the bright idea of rolling it up and putting it in the middle of a skein of yarn. Then I would mark the label in a way so I would know which skein had the money in it. Oh, the memories of the brands of yarn, colors we used back then, and the stores. No telling what else will come to my mind now about those days. The one thing is back in those "days" I was married to my now "ex" and he has been my "ex" for a very long time. Thanks for the memories.