How to cure a fabricaholic

I am usually a pretty verbose person. I have just returned from the Arthritis NZ working bee and I am lost for words so here are some pictures.

10am arrive to find a huge room that looks like the picture above.  And this,

and this.

Quickly realise that this is no place for children so escort mine across the road to Science Alive where they spend the day happily doing this (now that is a child with well-managed juvenile arthritis!),

and this.

Get back to the working bee and find lots of amazing helpers sorting the donations.  And what did we find? Everything!  Trust me when I say that whatever fabric, notion, haberdashery item or miscellaneous crafty thing you are looking for, then it will be on Arthritis NZ's stall. We went mining and we found gold. More things than I can list or describe here.  Incredible, amazing, beautiful and inspiring things. And I'm not joking when I say that it will be arriving to the market in a truck.  Each helper had different favourites and items they put in the many boxes we labelled "Treasures".  Here are a few of my mine.

And that is just from one box.  There are this many more.

Many thanks to all the people who have donated these amazing goods and many thanks to all the helpers who came to sort it all out.  Now to make this all worthwhile we need shoppers next Sunday.  Thousands of shoppers.  Tell your friends, your sisters, your workmates and your Mum. Please. And I wasn't joking about that trailer.

Arthritis New Zealand working bee - Helpers required

I'm not scared of fabric.  I'm also not scared of hard work.  However when I delivered some donated goods to Arthritis NZ and saw just how amazing the response to their request for donations has been, I quickly realised what a huge job it will be to sort and prepare their goods for sale.  This is an "all hands on deck" situation!

Arthritis NZ are having a working bee on
Sunday, April 11th, starting at 10am
and finishing, well, sometime before 11am on Sunday 18th April.  Just kidding.  Finishing mid-afternoon. If you are able to come along and help even for an hour or so at any stage during that time, then that would be fabulous.  Please email me on stashrehash@clear.net.nz and I'll give you all the details of where to come and what to bring.

Pictured above is one corner of Arthritis NZ's stall at the last Stash reHash market in November last year just minutes before the hall doors opened.  What you can't see is the room behind their stall filled with many, many more boxes of fabric.  They constantly replenished their stall throughout the market.  Given that they have even more goods this time, they'll be doing the same again. 

So if turning up exactly on opening time, dealing with crowds or queueing isn't your cup of tea, then come to the market a wee bit later in the day.  At the last market there were great fill-a-bag deals from 1pm on Arthritis NZ's stall.  I met several very happy late-comers who had avoided the crush, had a relaxed shop and left with enormous armloads of fabric set to become playtents, curtains, whole-cloth quilts and bunting and all purchased at absolute bargain prices.  I wrote BYO shopping bag in some ads, but if you have a big job planned then BYO wheelbarrow. Or maybe trailer.