shopping

I've been wondering if my last was a bit mean ... I don't like to be negative, but perhaps I am not being so, just straight. Enough of that frustrating circumstance and on, to more such!!

As it is now possible to go out without looking like a mummified creature and I hadn't been for some time, I decided to go to Croydon for a mosey round and to see if there was anything promising for a friend on C by C who makes cushions for Kids Company.

The kids they work with are abused and deprived and it really makes a difference to them. I remember hearing from elsewhere that some of the kids who do burglary don't have any sense of what it means to be robbed of your possessions because they have spent their lives in children's homes where they haven't had anything that is their own, so I can imagine it must be a great help to these kids to have something made for them. I can't imagine that sort of deprivation or how their own parents can be so vicious.

But I am beginning to see where the Nazis might have found their concentration camp guards ... I wonder whether their propaganda had the same sort of desensitising effect as the abuse: some people would have been subjected to it from a young age ...

To return to the shopping expedition -

First frustration: they have moved the haberdashery department to the basement, where it is much more difficult to find, difficult to see what they have (and no longer conveniently near the ladies' loo ;) ).

Second, the remnants box yielded only miserable pieces of nylon material in the dullest of green and brown and had neither trimmings nor buttons.

Third, what was in the sale was the sort of stuff, again polyester or the like and rather flimsy, which you would use for carnival costumes or party dresses - though gorgeous red and gold. I found one lovely red and gold cotton in the sale, but realised it was a pattern of little holly leaves!!

They did not even have the craft cotton they had had earlier. I did find one bright stripe in the sale, which if it is a mistake is only £1.60 worth of one, so I got that even though it wasn't quite what I wanted. (What I really wanted were small flowers or daisies.) I also got ribbons and buttons, but not in the sale, and a really nice dark bluey purple fabric with doodled flowers on it in white. I suspect it is a bit sophisticated for those kids, but if it is I have something else in mind for it.

I think I was probably too late for the sale and too early for the new stock. As is always the case, they had no idea at all what they might have coming in or when - everywhere you go they say all their stock is supplied from elsewhere and their job is merely to receive what they are given.

I am expecting some more craft stuff for swaps and projects on C by C which I hope will arrive tomorrow so that I can get them posted before the new rates go up (by quite a jump - which will be no help to struggling small businesses .... )