So I'm trying to find a giant button or toggle for my brother's itchy hairy cat bag. I'm not a particularly crafty person, so I don't really know where to get a giant toggle or button without waiting until winter, finding someone wearing a Paddington Bear-type coat, distracting this person with a marmalade treat, then snipping a toggle off their coat and beating feet. I know, I know - this plan is breath-taking in its cunning, but the fact remains that it is June and no one is wearing those types of coats. On to Plan B.
I thought I would start at FabricLand, because where there is fabric, often there are buttons! And there WERE buttons, but small ones. I wandered into the "drape fabrics" area, looking for a toggle-like item and immediately regretted it when a fight broke out over the last 10 yards of a particularly sumptuous brocade and I got hit in the face with a tassel. As I stood there, unapologized to, holding my schnozz and blinking my waterings eyes, I briefly considered using a giant tassel as a toggle. But then I remembered seeing the price of the tassel as it winged towards my face and decided to look elsewhere.
I ventured over to the LewisCraft next, hoping that my friend Sahi was wrong when she told me that they had closed. Sahi was not wrong. Foiled again!
At this point I decided that I needed a little taste of the forbidden to perk me up. So I got on the subway and took the long, long ride out to a certain yarn store in the east end. I justified the trip by saying "Knitters use big buttons! I'm sure I saw button-like things in this store!" The truth is that I was feeling reckless and was considering spending a whack of money I don't have on a project I'm planning for the summer.
I have to say, for the record, that I love this yarn store. It seems to be run by mature ladies who are patient, don't have attitude about certain kinds of fibre and welcome dumbass questions from pattern-eschewing newbie knitters like me. I think I passed my sweaty hands over every skein in there. Unfortunately for me (or, rather, fortunately for my credit card), the sweet lady in the yarn store could not, for the LIFE of her, find the price on the yarn that I wanted (Mission Hills Cotton, for those who care). Also, they had no toggles. Also, they were fresh out of the 10mm circular needle I thought I could buy to console myself for the lack of toggles. Super foiled!
Dejected, I left the yarn store and, in a last ditch effort to actually BUY something, I crossed the street to the Value Village. Maybe there would be a Paddington-Bear type coat in there! And maybe I could sidle up to it, distract it with marmalade, twist off a toggle and beat feet! Or . . . just buy the coat. This dilemma was proved moot when I discovered that there were no coats like that at the VV.
I wandered back towards the housewares area, thinking that perhaps I could find an object that I could turn INTO a toggle. On my way there, I found a perfect, cream-coloured, eyelet lace edged queen sized sheet that Chgi and I need for our fringe show. Triumph! Bolstered by my find, I strode confidently into Housewares just as a scuffle broke out over a particularly fine toaster oven and I got hit in the face with a pirate ship replica.
This time, the lady apologized, but only because:
a) I was holding the pirate ship replica that had flown out of her basket;
b) she was very little and I was clearly a very angry fat girl in a very narrow space; and
c) when I caught the ship as it ricocheted off my face, I shrieked "Jesus Christ, lady!".
At this point, I realized that the goddess was trying to tell me something. I'm not sure exactly what it was, 'cause my nose was killing me and I got distracted by some 69 cent earrings at the checkout counter. But it was along the lines of "Just . . . go home and ice your nose." So I did. But not before I stopped off at the Sev for a Slurpee. Crushed ice and glucose make everything better.
So listen - if any of you crafty types have any toggle-buying suggestions, I am ALL EARS. Just . . . stay away from my nose.
