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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Adventures In Shipping

I need to ship nine pounds of quilt batting to California. To someone who has the coolest sounding house no less! And, after I started looking into the shipping, I thought why oh why couldn't I just hand deliver it - argh.



Here it is - and where, obviously, things start heading south. It's the bag of wool that ate a sofa. Not only can I not find a box big enough, but if I could, the shipping was going to be completely outrageous. Completely!

One of my genius friends suggested a Space Bag, which, using just your own vacuum cleaner, sucks all the air out and compresses things down to ridiculously small sizes.



Here it is now. Way small enough to fit in a fairly standard shipping box and save an incredible amount on shipping fees. Not only did it easily fit in the box, but I was able to let enough air back in to let it puff out enough so it could become it's own packing material (gotta love wool for that, eh?) and also give it a little breathing room - so to speak :-/.

My only concern with all this was if it would be bad to compress the wool so much. So, as a test I let it sit for awhile and then opened the seal and presto - whooooosh! Right back to where it started. Just amazing.

I learn something new every day.

10 comments:

Peacecat said...

Great scott! That is a lot of batting. Glad you found a way to get it to a manageable size.

Deb said...

I buy Corriedale fleece each Spring from a farm in Wisconsin. They always ship it with the air sucked out of the bag like that, with instructions to open the bag as soon as possible to let it re-expand and "breathe."

Watching it open is like watching one of those flower tea things that expand when you pour hot water over it. It turns into something that seems half the size of the living room!

Claire the Shepherdess said...

What a fab idea! I'm so impressed! I should keep that one in mind for anytime I need to transport a quantity of wool (like for processing, maybe).

Michelle said...

I passed on an award to you, should you choose to accept it. :-) Come on over to "bloody Thursday's blog."

~Tonia~ said...

Woo hoo. Amazing how all that fluf can condense down. It should be perfectly fine as long as the person it is going to doesn't leave it like that for a year. I have had rovings in storage that I have compressed down for multiple years and every time I have checked on them they fluff up fine. Glad that you found a cheaper shipping alternative.

Michelle said...

Oops, commented too quickly. I have a post ready to go TOMORROW, in which I pass on the award.... :-/

flowerweaver said...

Wow, are the bags reusable? This could be the answer to my office problem!

manker said...

gives new meaning to "wild 'n wooly'" :) awesome stuff

gp in montana

Dana and Daisy said...

You can tell I have decorating on the mind! I love your wall color! So cheery! And looks nice with your furniture. It's not all matchy matchy!

I've used the space bags before to store wool yarn I was not planning to use right away. Keeps any woolly bugs at bay too!

Dana and Daisy said...

It was hard to mention just one of your animals, so Daisy has bestowed them all with a gift of friendship today.