Shopping Therapy
July 23rd, 2008 - 11:05 am
There it is, my big splurge at the craft store: one skein of yarn and two patterns.
The yarn was the hardest to resist, because there were so many awesome color combinations in the self-striping yarn, I wanted one of each. I had a bunch in my hands for a while too, but I somehow managed to force myself to put back all but the one in my all-time favorite colors. It’s not like I need yarn. I have yarn. I probably have enough yarn to keep knitting for several years after a nuclear holocaust. But you know, I always want yarn.
The patterns were easier to resist. I had a list of some from the Simplicity web site I wanted to check out, but I spent a good long time looking through the pattern book too, since they don’t have all their patterns on their web site. My gods, there are a lot of awful and ugly patterns out there. Truly hideous stuff. It was easy not to want them. The main reason I was able to resist buying too many patterns was that I know I do not need patterns. I am fully capable of making my own. I have a dressmakers form, and I know how to use it, and I couldn’t possibly come up with anything as ugly as the stuff they were selling to unwitting sewers who don’t know how to draft patterns themselves.
I couldn’t resist the 1950’s retro pattern for one huge reason: I have that pattern, as it was released in 1950-something, but it’s in my mom’s size, and she was such a tiny little thing, it would never fit me. Now I have it every size all the way from size 6 to size 12. I have loved that pattern since I was a little girl. Yeah! The other pattern is for a bunch of little sundresses/tunics. I didn’t really need it, because it’s a really basic pattern, but it was too cute to pass up. I’ll be able to mutate it a bunch of different ways too, so it’ll be handy.
I’m going to have to go on another exploratory mission in the closet to try to find my zipper foot. If I can’t find it, I guess I’ll be back at the craft store later this week to use my 40% of coupon to get a new one. I hate to do that, because I know I have at least two zipper feet somewhere, but if they are in the box room, they are as lost to me as if they were on the moon. I am nowhere near the boxes with my sewing stuff in them. It was completely stupid to have those boxes at the back with everything in front of them, but who knew it would be years before we got started dealing with those damn boxes. We were supposed to have a garage built by now, but things just don’t always go as planned. I know exactly where those boxes are too, but I can’t get to them yet. Maybe one day I’ll go crazy and go diving for them, making a mess of the rest of the room while I am at it. Its not like it isn’t a huge mess anyway.
I had a conversation with the little old lady that works in the sewing department. I really wish I hadn’t. It started out pleasantly enough. I commented that I didn’t like most of the patterns out right now. She commented that young girls today dressed too skimpy, and all the clothes in the stores were made out of such sheer materials that she had to sew all her own clothes to be modest. I agreed there wasn’t much clothing out in the stores that was especially modest, and then she laid this on me:
“And then the young girls wonder why they get raped.”
My stomach turned as soon as she said that, and as far as I was concerned the conversation and any future conversations I might have had with her were officially over. “Did you see how she was dressed? She was asking for it!” are fighting words to me. Pisses me right off, because it gives a total pass to the asshole men who rape women, as though the poor ape-like men can’t control themselves at the sight of a woman who isn’t covered head-to-toe in fabric. I just gathered my things and walked off without saying anything. How I managed to not snap back with something to her comment was a miracle, because my hands were shaking, and I was immediately pissed right the hell off. She doesn’t get a pass because she was old either. That was crappy thinking back in her younger years, and it’s crappy thinking now, and I think a whole lot less of anyone who holds the belief that how a woman is dressed has anything to do with whether or not she gets raped. In fact, I tend to think of people who hold that view as subhuman and generally want them nowhere near me.
Well, just one more reason to hate going to that Hobby Lobby. If it wasn’t the only craft store for quite a distance, I wouldn’t keep going there, but it is. I’m sort of stuck with it, especially now that gas prices are so high. I can’t be spending a couple of dollars in gas to go buy something that costs a couple of dollars every time I need or want something crafty, and ordering online only works if I am getting a bunch of stuff. So shopping there makes me ill, but my options are currently limited. Blech.
I think I’ll go sit on the couch and watch craft shows while looking over my new patterns. I might make myself one of those sundresses tomorrow!
6 Responses to “Shopping Therapy”
And then the other side of that one is the people who say “She did nothing wrong, she only walked alone through a park at three in the morning where there have been five rapes in the past month.”
Both arguments annoy me greatly. Wear what you want and know how you intend to protect yourself. One could even argue that a short skirt makes it easier to kick an attacker in the teeth.
The first thing that popped into my head was “Well, then, maybe we should all wear burquas,” but I didn’t think she’d have known what a burqua was. Then I thought “With a woman being raped every two minutes, I find it hard to believe they were all walking around in skimpy clothes,” but I really didn’t want to find out what other disgusting thoughts she had in her head. I will just be avoiding her altogether in the future.
That was the first time in my life I’d actually heard someone standing right in front of me saying that. I’d read it, heard it on news shows, and heard about people having said stuff like “Well, did you see how she was dressed?” but never has anyone close enough to spit on said it in my presence. And spitting on her was a thought that crossed my mind too.
I should have said something. I sort of regret not saying something. But … it’s one of my hot button issues, and I knew once I said one thing, she’d say something even more stupid, and then it would have ended up with me foaming at the mouth and being removed from the store or worse. I might email the company and complain a little. As a customer, it put me right off, and the more I have thought about it, the more I think I’ll just keep a list of things I need and drive over to the suburb where the other craft store is when there’s enough on the list to make it worthwhile. My stomach is still turned by the whole encounter, and I am finding myself not really wanting to go back to that store ever.
Meanwhile she’s probably forgotten she said it.
Oh, to be one of those carefree people who don’t think about what they say. Or maybe not.
I’m sure she’s thought nothing more of it. Meanwhile, it keeps rumbling around in my head making me more and more angry.
Yeah, an ignorant comment like that makes me angry too and makes me want to come up with something sarcastic to say.
She got lucky this time that I was trying to have a good day and I was so shocked I couldn’t respond without foaming at the mouth and making a scene. I better never, EVER, hear anything that flat out awful come out of her mouth again anywhere near me, because I don’t think I’ll be able to hold my tongue again.
She better hope I am successful at avoiding her altogether, because I have found people like that will, without a doubt, say something just as stupid the very next time I see them. And I do hate making scenes in public, but I do … sometimes. Sometimes someone really just has to do it. Not that it does any good, I don’t think, but it does occasionally make me feel better. I’d like to think other people get educated in the process, but I doubt they do. Someone who was so obviously my elder and has had a long, long life in which to learn that rape is not caused by what someone is wearing and to not blame the victim for the crime, isn’t likely to learn anything from anything I have to say. That kind of thinking is set in freaking stone by the time a person is a senior citizen.