A Close One

Before I could actually start sewing the ITT outfit with a good conscience, I needed to finish off a bit of detail work on some, um, unusual puppets for the kids' puppet team at church. I'd had these characters...in a rubbermaid bin which occupied a fair percentage of my very cozy sewing nook...since before Christmas, with the knowledge that they really weren't needed until the end of February.

Ok, since it's the end of February...

It wasn't difficult, but it was rather fiddly and tedious and made a little more awkward by the fact that the well-meaning puppet master had already stuffed the bodies of the victims. Overstuffed, actually...they had kind of a rigor mortis look about them. So, I unstuffed them substantially, added the details that were necessary, then stuffed them reasonably. And had two large zip lok bags of polyfill left. Now the rubbermaid bin will be leaving the house when the kids go to puppet practice tonight, and I'll have another couple of square feet of space regained.

But, that put me rather late changing the thread and such to start on the ITT.

And I discovered I couldn't find the thread that I really believed I had. I found one lowly little bobbin that was the right color...but nothing else. So I had to make a trip to Hancock's at 6:45 last night. I went ahead and picked out buttons...that took a few minutes because the only buttons in the right color and size were on a different display than the button wall (they were also more expensive than the ones on the button wall. Sigh.). While I was dragging my little fabric swatch across the rack of Metrosene thread, an announcement came over the PA: 'Thank you for shopping at Hancock's Fabrics. We are now closed. Please bring your purchases to the cash register.'

Yikes! I thought Hancock's closed at eight! I spotted the matching thread and grabbed two spools and hotfooted it to the cash register.

The clerk said that they'd had the new hours for a little while now; the corporate offices just rather abruptly notified them that the hours of operation would be cut back. 'It's nice for us', she said, 'We get to go home a little earlier.'

But the lady who let us out just shook her head. 'They'll change it back one of these days...probably with no notice then, either.'

But, knowing that Hancock's is in financial difficulty, it kind of scares me just a little that they have whittled the hours a bit. I pulled out after procuring my thread and buttons in the nick of time, just as some folks with out-of-county license plates parked and walked up to the door. Guess they hadn't heard about the new hours yet either.

Anway, Wednesdays are pretty full days but I'm hoping for 30 minutes or so of sewing this afternoon. We're leaving for the Expo a week from today...and I'm determined to wear this ;)