Successful Swaps

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My simple classified ad said that I had wine bottles and gallon jugs to trade for fabric or yarn scraps, and here's what developed:

A lady responded who had just started working full time, and who no longer had time to sew. But she could find time to put up a few bottles of wine, so she took several from my collection and gave me three large sacks full of beautiful, clean remnants.

From this windfall, I made numerous gifts of clothes and stuffed toys for my grandchildren and other little ones . . . since many of the "scraps" were too big to sacrifice for patches.

I still have enough material to keep me producing quilts, hangings, or whatever for some time. Andif I should run low well, I've always got a few bottles left!

Donna Parks
Rapid City, S.D.

The cleaning, painting, and general handyman work I've been doing for my city neighbors the last two years led to a summer in the country for me, my wife, and some of our friends.

Many of my customers have summer homes that needed some fixing as the season approached. It was only natural that they should want me to help out, butafter having just gone through some major financing many of them weren't too willing to hire me for cash.

My wife was on her summer vacation from school, however, so the two of us, along with some friends, undertook a threeday painting job in exchange for six days of pure enjoyment at a beach house.

Word of mouth travels fast (especially where no money is involved), and we found that one job led to another, week after week.

We all experienced one of our best summers ever . . . for absolutely no cost except a minimum of pleasurable, companionable labor.

John McCabe
Brooklyn, N.Y.

When we made our move to the Ozarks from Arizona, we had so many possessions to transport that no selfrespecting homesteader could do without (two horses, a tractor, a Datsun pickup, and a car, plus furniture and innumerable boxes of canned foods and household goods) that we finally bought ourselves a moving van to carry the loads.

And I do mean loads. We actually made three round trips1,400 miles each wayin that van. The journeys to Arkansas, burdened with our own essentials, were fine . . . we knew we were saving many dollars that a professional moving company would have charged us. But each return to Phoenix with a big, empty truck seemed unbearably expensive. So we ran an ad in the paper, describing ourselves as owners of a private transport rig and stating our destination.

As a result, each of our trips back to Phoenix was paid for . . . by barter. We acquired a rototiller, a shredder, a chain saw, a riding lawn mower, and a bush hog for our pastures, and each of our trading friends saved money by having us haul their load to Phoenix.

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