one more stitch

For the longest time, I banned myself from Dressew, mainly because I would buy metres and metres of fabric or trim every time I went there, regardless of whether or not I needed it. I have a natural compulsion to collect sewing supplies for a rainy day. It's been a lifelong issue.

Twice this week I went to Dressew. The first day was to buy some materials for small seasonal gifts for friends. This was a necessity because my pre-existing debts don't go away during the holidays (and suck up a significant portion of my paychecks) and I still wanted to have a little something for people I like. This wasn't troubling. The second day... the second day was troubling. The second day I had to buy some batting for my projects, but was distracted by a new shipment of retro fabrics. Suddenly I had 3 metres of geometric prints in my hand. I thought I could make some shopping bags out of them, which meant I should also get some webbing for the handles. So... What should have been a relatively cheap pop-in wound up being quite a bit more.

I would have buyers' remorse if it were anything other than fabric.

This morning I finished the first round of projects and they worked out pretty well. The second round of projects will likely require a printer, so I'll have to wait for that to happen. I'm slightly concerned that people who receive these things will feel ripped off, considering they cost virtually nothing to make, but I suppose if someone felt like that I probably shouldn't have given them anything anyway. I can tell you about the one thing that I made that I actually love the most: a stuffed Totoro, complete with leaf on his head. It's pretty cute. Not sure if I can give that away just yet.

Yesterday after Dressew, I met my school chums for drinks in the early afternoon while one pretended to Christmas shop. We started at the Lennox, which, I have to say, is one of the least impressive establishments downtown. Super expensive and the waitstaff are wholly disinterested in you unless you order food and shots of premium liquor, especially in the afternoon. We left after a drink and went to a deserted Morrissey and spent the next few hours there. I had to meet work friends for drinks after they finished work, so made my way to the Cascade. I was probably too tipsy at 6pm to be sociable, so sat back with a pint and scarfed down polenta fries while trying to keep up with what everyone was talking about. I bowed out after a couple of hours, blaming my tipsy head and 6 hours of drinking, and came home to catch up with a long distance friend. (I currently do not have Skype, but would really like to get it set up. Can anyone locally assist me with this?)

Unrelated, my friend started sniffing/huffing my hair while we visited a few days ago. I mention this only because it's the second person in two weeks that commented about how good my hair smells. I use cheap drugstore shampoo and that's it (no conditioner in the winter; it makes my hair gross midway through the day I washed it if I do), so it surprised me. All those years of spending so much on hair products and I rarely had comments about how my hair smelled. So weird.