I can honestly say that crocheting for charity saved my life, literally. Five, six years ago I was in a very dark place. My son had sustained life-threatening injuries in an accident. I could hardly function for the crying and worrying. Then we got hit with back to back hurricanes. The county flooded. Families had to evacuate. Kids were left with the clothes on their backs and flip flops on their feet. School opening was delayed by a month. It was that bad. We're a small, rural county. People just started pulling together. Wal Mart donated shoes and sneakers to every school aged child. Others donated clothes. I started crocheting. I got out the scraps. I started making hats and mittens. Eventually I concentrated on hats because I could get more hats done in the time it took to make a pair of mittens. Someone saw me crocheting at the library and asked what I was working on. So happens, she was the president of the ladies auxiliary at her church. She asked for donations of scraps and passed them on to me. By the time Christmas came around, I had more than 100 hats that were distributed through the schools. I kept going. I worked like a crazy person for 3 years. It was a mission. Eventually, every kid that wanted one, got a hat. I'd go to Wal Mart to shop and see a kid in a hat I made. It made me cry. It also helped my smile again.

Saypoint, that will be very pretty! As for the price of yarn now, I do watch sales for big projects like afghans. I will say, though, that if it's for a sweater or socks for me or DH, I don't use acrylic yarn, and use a wool or wool blend, which is a LOT more expensive, though I do try to find the least expensive that will still look nice and drape properly for the project. I do quite often pay $20 for sock yarn. BUT I have been wearing the very first pair of sock I made 17 years. So looking at it that way, that pair of socks has cost me pennies per wearing. I do have to repair the bottom of the heels on those and a couple of other pair after catching the bottom on a screw in threshold plates. So, I guess my point is, I don't just look at initial cost, but cost per use, also. Our local knitting circle has participated in Warm Hands, Warm Hearts, a program that was started about 18 years ago by our local hospital's chaplin's wife, who is a long time member of our circle. She is a retired teacher, and had a child who had no hat, so she went home and knitted a hat for that child. It snow balled from there into many knitting/crochet groups making hats and mittens to donate to our local hospitals emergency rooms for the nurses to provide hats and mittens to those who come in with out hats and mittens in the winter. We all look for yarn at yard sales, and often will have it donated to us from various sources. I've even been knitting in the laundramat and been asked if I could use free yarn! The employee had been cleaning out her aunt's home after the aunt's passing, and hadn't been able to bring herself to put it in the garbage. She lived right down the street and immediately called her DH to bring me THREE big garbage bags of clean free yarn! Of course I took it to our next meeting and shared! We also make blankets for local children in distress at a special short term home that takes in children who may be from a single parent home, when that parent can't care for them for whatever reason. Our hospital just put on a thank you dinner for us, and told us we have contributed over 32,000 hand made items in 18 years!

Disclaimer - We are the contractors in this story who saved the day, testified in court, and established a great relationship with the homeowner. An educated consumer is our best customer. On GC's and subs- 1- Give me a good price on this job and I'll shovel you tons of work. This is an old tactic used by GC's to drive the cost down / raise profits. After the first job the sub is fired and quickly replaced. Subs who haven't been burned by this before, or are hungry, are young, or didn't know this happened to them are easy prey to this scam. If the sub stays on and wants to get paid his full amount, he is quickly replaced. 2- My subs have been with me a long time. What is a long time? Months or years? Did you speak to the sub himself? 3- Most GC's have bare general knowledge about what their subs do. They don't have the specific knowledge of the trades. If you have specific concerns about waterproofing, it's best to ask the sub directly before the job starts. Having done your homework on John Bridge, or Fine Homebuilding will help you immensely. 4- GC's are salesmen who add 25% to 35% to what the sub is charging to make their living. IMHO most GC's view subs as commodities not skilled craftsmen and are not willing to pay a skilled craftsman the rates they deserve. The best craftspeople I know around the world are all self employed and don't work for GC's. Most work aside the GC, directly for the HO. On the rare chance I do work under a GC, the HO is actively involved in the process and has usually brought us in specifically. 5- GC's prefer to price items by the square foot or some easy (brainless) method. I find this a great disservice to the HO. If I am tiling the floor of a car dealership (wide open space) the price per sf will be lower than a dentist's office (tiny rooms and hallways) IN these instances a per sf price would be useless. Then we get into prep work, access to the jobsite, working conditions, and a myriad of variables unique to each jobsite. Is there a gate that needs to be kept closed all the time? Limited hours we can be on the site? Is the building heated and cooled? There is no way a flat rate of $/sf is useful when it comes to certain trades. 6- GC's are not inclined to pay for prepwork. They pay for finished product. While we all want the finished product to be gorgeous, prep work is critical. Certainly in a shower, waterproofing is what you are really buying. Tile is just the pretty surface. This is why so many showers fail. I've actually had a GC say to me - "I don't pay you for prep work, I pay you to install tile" Prep work usually drives up the cost of a job considerably. Customers sometimes don't want to hear this or think we are adding to the scope of work unnecessarily. We don't work for such folks. 7- Why don't contractors just tell HO's they are busy and will have to wait? When a potential customer calls, asking when they want the work completed is my first or second question. This comes with a lot of risk, mainly losing the job all together. My 40 years experience has taught me that most HO's call contractors when the HO is ready to start the project and is eager to get things rolling. Telling a HO they will have to wait a few months in the first phone call is usually the kiss of death. My thought is - Would you want to hire a contractor who isn't busy? Granted there are job delays and cancellations, but a good businessman knows how to keep his schedule full and workers busy. It takes some sales skill (and empathy) to save that first phone call from going down in flames and losing the opportunity to educate a customer on the process of hiring a qualified contractor. 8- Not so news flash - Not all great contractors are great businessmen. Makes sense once you think about it though. The manufacturers have reps to show us their products, there are trade schools and unions, but teaching a contractor how to run his business is woefully lacking. Being a craftsman in any trade doesn't make you a good businessperson or a good salesperson. Some good contractors become subs as to have the business side of their job taken care of by the GC who feeds them a steady stream of work and a reliable paycheck. Pounding the pavement, making sales, maintaining a website, and giving estimates all take effort, skill, and time not everyone has. 9- Not so news flash #2 - Not all great salesmen are great contractors. This is the hard part for the average HO to sort out. A slick talking young man in a pressed shirt can have all the right sounding answers. So what's a HO to do? Start by asking; Who will be coming into my home? Will they have seen the jobsite in person or pictures before they knock on my door? Or are they just given my address that morning? Ask what products will be used and why. Talk to the manufacturer's reps for those products. It's a good sign when the rep knows your contractor. It's a good sign when the rep backs up what your contractor claims. Ask the Rep about any installation tricks/hazards to watch for. Every manufacturer has YouTube videos giving detailed instructions which MUST be followed. An educated consumer is our best customer. 10- Not so news flash #3 - There are good people on YouTube and then..... there is the rest of the crowd. As mentioned above, the John Bridge Forum and Sal Diblasi's videos are spot on. So are the videos made by the product manufacturer or a trade association. A HO will have a hard time discerning the good from the bad YouTube videos without trade knowledge or a trained ear which is why I recommend the manufacturer's videos and talking with their reps. The reps get paid for this, its their job. When you find a good contractor who provides excellent service the best compliment is to recommend them, give a good Google / Angie's List / Yelp review. This will also help other HO's in their search. I could go on for pages, but y'all are probably bored by now. If you have specific questions, I'd be happy to answer.

That would torque me off, too, Bkay. I don't like vagueness or dishonesty at all, but especially not then it comes to charity. I know there's an old saying that whatever you give away it's no longer your concern what happens to it but I think this case is different. Since they did tell you it was donated as they saw fit, there's not much that you can do except to let them know how you feel about it and if they continue to put out a sign that it would go to the Linus Project I wouldn't use them to do the donation, I'd contact someone else who is trustworthy. I would also tell anyone I knew what happened and I would let the shop know about it, too. I just wouldn't tell anyone that I suspected that the person took it for herself, that could set you up for a liability since you can't really prove it. I've gotten to the point that I don't give to charity too much. The last time I was really steamed was when a long-time family friend since he was just a kid of 12 wound up in the hospital with heart problems and pneumonia, almost died. His mom told me that his girlfriend had started one of those go fund me deals. So my whole family donated what we could and in fact we were the only ones who did except for a couple of others. Never did any of us ever get so much as a hint of a thank you for it. And we all gave quite a good amount. I never brought it up with the person who was ill because they broke up and anyway I don't feel like he was in a situation where he even knew what was going on much less thank anyone. I do wonder if he ever saw any of that money go to his bills or household needs though.