Yesterday on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com I ordered some things I didn't want to bother trying to find in Russia (tailor's chalk, a book called Sewing Green, and a bias tape maker); today, after the frenzied high of online shopping I thought it would be prudent to try and find some places in Moscow where I can buy sewing notions and helpful bits. So I spent quite a bit of time on yandex (kind of like a Russian Google) looking for fabric shops and places with names like "Sewing World" and "The House of Fabrics." None of them were near where I live and I decided my first sojourn should not be halfway across Moscow so I yandexed "fabric stores medvedkovo" (Medvedkovo being the region where I live in Moscow) and came across one "store" in this furniture-showroom type place a couple kilometers from where I live. So I hopped on a bus and went. The plan was to take pictures and document what I saw and found, but right inside the doors of the place is this huge sign with a picture of a camera and the red circle-and-line forbidding business. So all I got was the picture above of the outside of the building, "The House of Furniture."
I went to the little corner on the top floor of the building which had the fabric and it was fairly impressive, even though about thirty too many of the swatches had lighthouse motifs. The women working were the opposite of helpful so I spent a good amount of time browsing and trying to decide which fabrics I'd want to make things out of and I found some I really really liked, not only for their lack of stretchiness but also for their material construction and design. I was fairly certain that the place was only for curtains but I figured I could use the material anyway. So I called over the less-than-helpful woman in charge of it and she started drawing up a quote for me; she was surprised when I said I wanted a square meter of the fabric because this was a curtain shop. Then she told me it would be two weeks until I could collect my fabric, which all seemed very Soviet to me. So I said "no thanks" and as I was walking out I heard her tell her friend that I was a дура, or a fool. I spun around and was like, "hey, lady, we just had an entire conversation about fabric in Russian, don't you think I'd be able to understand the word fool?" I was furious and very happy I hadn't purchased anything.
Based on the other results of my yandex search I think I can find a better fabric store, even if it will be less convenient in terms of location. I don't need that shit. I miss customer service.
Next weekend due to (un)foreseen visa circumstances I'll be in Vilnius, Lithuania, and I'm going to look into sewing shops there. That should be exciting! Anyway, today's project will be to draw up a pattern for a Morsbag and then whip one up. We'll see how that goes.
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