Shopping local

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day as far as classes go. 

I have some pictures to share with you this morning and the rest will come in the next day or so. I love when the students jump outside the box. 

Now the first class was a mystery so there was no opportunity to jump out of that box. 

If you remember, I goofed when cutting one of my fabrics or I would have had the top done - or almost. I had tried to find which stores bought the fabric by using the manufacturer's product finder on their website. This particular collection wasn't on the web. Hmmm - it's old, but it should be in the archives. So I contacted them. Got an immediate (or same day) response and they actually located a shop in the US that was selling it on their website. 

But I know that I've seen it locally - but where???  So when I went to The Hobby Horse for the class, I searched the store. Yep - they bought this collection or parts of it. The one I wanted was an overall red print and I found it. You won't believe where. It was hiding amongst another collection that has the IDENTICAL print on it. Let me find a picture of the fabric for you as I forgot to take a picture in the store. 

This first one is the fabric from the Glam Girl collection by Northcott. 

Glam Girl by Northcott

This second one is from Speckles by Patrick Lose.

Seriously?????   Those are the same prints. Whose came first????  OK - there may be a slight variation of the placement of the dots - but you'd never know unless I showed you! They do look slightly different because the scale of the pictures isn't quite right. 

Anyway - doesn't matter. I found the fabric and I bought enough to cover the miscut and perhaps make the quilt a wee bit larger. I also found this other print from the Glam Girl collection so I bought some of that to make the border and binding. 

A border print for the quilt and the missing fabric

I love shopping local - I get stuff right away!!! And I'm supporting my local quilt shop. 

Here's what the mystery quilt looks like. It's a combination of churn dash blocks and a framed square. It wasn't a mystery pattern, but I broke it up so they didn't know what was happening until near the end. 

A corner of the quilt 

Now we had an interesting discussion on shopping at the class. It was about shipping costs/duty/taxes and shopping local versus shopping online. 

I get it that some stuff can't be bought local and needs to be shipped across the border. So I'm willing to pay the price if I have to. In most cases, the cost of shipping is enough of a deterrent that I won't proceed with the shipment if I think the shipping costs outweighs the value of the item. 

The other day, I wanted a tripod bracket for my phone so I could take some videos. I went online to see what was out there. Oh yes - I found it, but my local Best Buy did NOT have them available in the store. I could shop online and then pay to have it shipped or I could have it shipped to the store. 

I want it NOW. I checked out the massive online store. I'm not even going to mention their name because I hate them with a passion. Single handily, they have changed the way we shop and it has meant death for a lot of small businesses. Yes - they had the item that I wanted. 

DH had a book that he wanted and so together the two items hit the $35 mark which allows me free shipping. I would have to wait for a couple of days (the fulfillment center is a couple of miles from the house) for delivery. Anyway, I placed the order on Tuesday and it arrived on Friday with free shipping. It was scheduled to arrive next Tuesday. 

A part of our discussion was the subscription that you can pay for to have the privilege of getting free shipping from this company. I believe you can pay annually or you can pay monthly. I'm not sure of the details. But I learned that if you place several orders in a month, you get discounts!!!!  Talk about incentive to make you buy more. 

I asked what kind of things were they buying online? Dish soap, laundry detergent. Yes - we buy those, but it lasts a long time at our house. We are two - they are six with two young children so I get it that they use more. Instead of waiting for the large jars of mayonnaise to go on sale at the local grocery store, they can buy it on this website at the "sale" price any day. 

Of course, this membership also provides you with music and videos and a whole lot more stuff. 

There are two things that are disturbing about this. First - the amount of stuff that a household purchases. If the country depended on our household to sustain the economy, then the economy would fail very quickly. We don't buy a lot of clothes, furniture, appliances, beauty products, or unnecessary groceries at our house. We just don't! We don't spend the afternoon shopping for the sake of shopping. Like large jars of mayonaise - god forbid that we would have mayonaise in our house. Nor ketchup, nor mustard or relish. We don't eat hot dogs. We don't eat bread. I mean the list goes on and on as far as what we don't eat. We eat healthy stuff. We don't buy in bulk because we don't use enough to justify buying in bulk. 

The second thing that's disturbing is that people are buying online becauuse it's convenient. I get that - you might be stuck at home or live in a remote area. But there's nothing like kicking the tires and getting out to the shops and experience what you're buying. It's also "cheaper" on the environment. The carbon footprint for all those online deliveries is greater than if you went shopping for yourself. 

Besides  - what the heck are people doing with their time? Watching TV or all those moves that you can watch because you subscribe to this service!!!!   I'm also shocked at how many people buy books rather than get them from the library. People are in this instant gratification mode and instead of waiting a couple of weeks for a book - they need it NOW. OK - so I needed my tripod holder NOW, but I was happy to wait. No big deal. If I read the latest James Patterson years after he's written the book - will I die???  Heck - I haven't even read the last two Harry Potter books. I'm OK with that. 

I'm not knocking anyone's lifestyle. It's a free country and we can all do what we what with our time and our money. It just seems a shame that we are allowing a huge conglomorate to get bigger, get more data on our lives and before you know it - we're going to have a BIg Brother situation (gosh - how dramatic I can quickly become!). 

Anyway - I hated the W store when it came to Canada. I don't shop there either on a regular basis. Only if I need something that I can't get anywhere else. 

All that to say that I want to support the little guy. The one that struggles each day to make a living because someone came to their shop. The ones where I'll get personal service - like the used book stores that I visit. Or the quilt stores. Or the bike shops. That's where I spend my money and I like to shop at the same grocery store where I know the cashiers. I think I need to move to a small town and fast!!!

Ooops - sorry about that - but it's just fascinating to me how much people spend on things and I wonder how the heck they can afford it. We can't afford it. I guess it's all about setting priorities. 

Speaking of what people do with their time - my MOM is a TV junkie. I swear she watches TV 24/7!!  Seriously - she goes to bed at midnight and it up at four. Probably because she can't bear to miss what's on the TV. I'm not kidding - every time I call, she's watching some show or sports. Good grief - this coming from a woman who severely limited our TV watching time when we were kids. But it also shouldn't surprise me because my Mom spent her afternoons (when we were kids) watching the soap operas. Anyway - what else will she do with her time. But it's frustrating talking to her. How do you like the new phones? Yes - we managed to get cordless phones in the house. Do you think that just ONCE, she could say "thanks - these are helpful"? No. It drives me crazy that she's so ungrateful. Sorry - I know it's my Mom and that's she is old. Just ONCE - a thank you would be appreciated. 

She had a flip answer for everything we talked about yesterday. Let's just say that I rolled my eyes through the entire conversation. And then I wonder why I don't call her more often. 

On that note, I"m out of here. I'm still prepping for classes (I've got two different classes today) - I'm going to make it, but it's going to be tight and there's no time to tidy up in between so once the last one is finished at noon tomorrow, it'll be back to the studio to do some tidying up!!!

Have a super day!!!!!

Ciao!!!