The most frustrating shopping trip in recent memory

Well.  After staying late after work tonight for two hours of training, during which the video I was supposed to be watching online (streaming) kept pausing every few minutes, and finally refused to go past a certain point, I stopped by Michael's on my way home to pick up some black satin 1/4" ribbon for a shoe order.  Now, I had already been on several fruitless errands to find said ribbon, first looking in the Wal-Mart craft section, followed by JoAnn's and Hancock Fabrics and finally a thorough combing of my mom's stash when I was at my parents' house last weekend.  I had already looked through my own stash several times, of course.  Michael's was my last hope. 

You would think, wouldn't you, that black satin 1/4" ribbon would be a fairly standard thing to have in stock?  Apparently this is not the case.  I was able to find black satin 1/8" and 1/2" ribbon, as well as 1/4" black grosgrain, organza, and velvet ribbon.  I looked in the regular sold-by-spool ribbon section, in the clearance section, in the scrapbooking section, in the cut ribbon section...  Nothing.  Now, it's possible that I had not scoured JoAnn's and/or Hancock's as well as I thought I had, or that on those two separate shopping trips I had forgotten to look for this specific item, as I had other things on my mental list at the time.  But I wasn't willing to go back to either place just to be disappointed again. 

I looked through all the ribbon sections again.  I found black satin 1/4" ribbon with the annoying little loops along the edges, the purpose for which I have always been mystified by.  If this were for a project of my own, I would have given up by now and chosen to go a different direction.  But it is for an order, and although I did not have the specific ribbon needed to fill the order at the time, I was confident that it would be easy to find.  I should have known better.  But I refused to give up. 

I began scouring the entire store for anything that might have the necessary ribbon on it somehow, whether it was a drawstring bag or small purse that had it as a handle, a teddy bear with it in a bow around his neck, or a box of small candles or soaps with it tied around as decoration.  ANYTHING.  I was willing to buy a book that had a it as a ribbon bookmark, at this point. 

Finally, I found a bundle of fat quarters of fabric that had the exact ribbon I needed!  I could hardly believe it, and at first I was afraid that the florescent store lighting was playing tricks on my eyes, and it was actually navy blue pretending to be black.  But it was, in fact, the real deal!  And as an added bonus, I realized probably a full minute after finding the ribbon that the fabrics it was tied around were ones that would coordinate perfectly with a set of fabrics I already have, that I'm planning to make a collection of Christmas holiday doll outfits from!  (And before you ask, it is NEVER too early to start planning for Christmas.  :p)  Which is good, because the bundle was $8, and although I was desperate and half mad by this point, that wasn't really worth paying for the two feet of ribbon it got me.  Especially since I only need about four inches. 

So it was a happy ending after all, but I still went straight to the kitchen for an emergency infusion of chocolate, as soon as I got home.  If I could take it intravenously at this point, I probably would.  :p  But all of this is now behind me, and I feel much better after venting.  I am going to settle down with my latest Netflix DVD and make doll shoes!  :D 

I am procrastinating on cleaning...

I had started to work on doll shoes again tonight (which I've been doing every night for the past four or five days) but I had to stop because I couldn't find my little bag of tiny rubber bands. These are kind of essential for holding the inner sole of a new shoe to the doll's foot while the glue dries so it holds that shape in the finished shoe. So I started looking for the rubber bands, which seem to have disappeared somewhere amid all the various projects on my worktable.

The obvious solution is to clean off my worktable, which I need to do anyway, but I lost steam and decided to sit at the computer for a while. :p Ended up talking to a couple online friends, and decided to update my blog as long as I'm here. I suppose I should post some pictures of what I've been working on.



I made these two pairs on Saturday, and on Sunday I went shopping and bought ten more colors of the narrow ribbon, which added to the spools I already had in my stash makes a total of twenty-one colors that I can make the first pair in, not counting several color combinations that I came up with, too.

Then I made another pair, first taking a picture of the materials and process:



And of course the finished product:


Then on Monday I made another pair:


I plan to offer all of these styles (and several more that I have in my head) for sale on my website. I am hoping to open my Sales page this weekend, so I need to make more of each style in several different colors. Which means I should get off the computer and find those rubber bands. :p