Foolish purchase or the ultimate bargain?

I must not buy crap... I must not buy crap... I must only buy what I need or what I genuinely want... A bargain is only a bargain if you use it...

So there I was in Clegs this morning to buy a 40cm 5.5mm circular needle (a genuine need to make hats from the 12-ply Bendigo yarn - my 5mm circulars give too tight gauge and the 6mm too loose gauge and I am not going to knit an entire hat with my cheap Chinese-made bamboo DPNs because this is too irritating for a whole hat).  I was going to hang off buying them until my Addi Clicks arrived - I ordered and paid for them a month ago but it seems there is a huge backlog in Germany and I have no idea when they may finally turn up.

ANYWAY I look, as always, on the clearance tables which is a very dangerous thing.  Fortunately all the yarn on offer either contains mohair or is novelty or is orange or is acrylic and I have no desire to even touch it with a 10-foot pole.  Then I look at the button box.

I normally don't worry about being tempted here - the buttons are only 10 cents each, which means I can't do too much damage.  But this morning's offering contained the motherload.  Clegs had obviously decided to unload novelty buttons that weren't selling well.  I ended up spending $17.50 (you do the maths) on cute little wooden sheep, ceramic cats, plastic dogs and Beatrix Potter characters (I am a huge fan of Peter Rabbit) - all these buttons normally retail for $2-$5.50 each.  Most of them are too big and heavy to use in knitting and I am not a sewer... What the hell am I going to do with all of them?

I tell myself that I am taking part in lots of swaps this year and these will be lovely additions to my packages.  Some of the buttons I can use on handmade cards and other projects.  And a few of the buttons are actually usable on finished garments.

But 175???  Lord help me.