gurdymonkey | Delighful things

Second best thing seen today: a bumpersticker on the back of a Matrix this morning that read "Aubrey Maturin '08." Never mind the maneuvers, go straight at 'em!

Best thing seen today: 8 7/8 yards of natural silk broadcloth for $7.50 a yard.

"What?" you say. "But

gurdymonkey , aren't you trying to economize?"

Well, yeah. However, I have been thinking about what to use when I get good enough to make a kosode with shibori decoration. Silk, ideally, but having used habotai for parts of my Heian, it's too drapy. Crepe (aka chirimen) is right out because they didn't have it in period. Silk Connection carries something called Fuji broadcloth that I have heard good reports on but have not tried. They also expect one to shell out $14 for an entire swatch set and when one only wants one swatch, that's overkill.

So I toddled over to Stonemountain and Daughter in Berkeley hoping they might have some so I could at least get an idea what the stuff is like and start budgeting for a buy. There was nothing on the main sales floor - tons of silks, but no silk broadcloth and there is no WAY I am doing shibori on dupioni, thank you very, very much.

I headed upstairs to check the clearance section, figuring I wouldn't find any silk of the hand or weight I was interested in, but there might be something else up there worth looking at. Of course, I find a bolt of silk broadcloth and of course it's marked 50% off, making it over $1/yard cheaper than Silk Connection's before shipping.

Still in the doghouse over the ginger cheesecake brain-worm incident and having nothing to lose at this point,

sasha_khan intones inside my head, "If you find good fabric, you HAVE to buy the whole bolt because you'll never ever see it again." I hug the bolt to my chest, crooning "I LOVE the Second Floor!" in a trance of silk lust and we buys it all because it is our Preciousssss and we wants it!