May 29, 2009

A Great Discovery!


The weekend so far has been spent as promised - eating zongzi and also eating jiaozi (dumplings). We've been given piles of both from friends and neighbors. Its actually been somewhat encouraging to know that we have enough Chinese friends who think we are important enough to give and make food for, that we have been given several meals worth.

Yesterday was a great day. I (Jess) have been reunited with my sewing machine and have been putting together a quilt. James and I went yesterday to investigate fabric sellers in the market to find some more pieces for me. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned, using the proxy to access our blog makes it impossible to add pictures, but I sure wish I could put this picture on here. The fabric store is actually a walk in closet sized room off the street with fabric piled solid three feet off the ground and more fabric piled on top of that fabric along the periphery to about 8 feet high. You have to climb that fabric mountain to look for what you want and then you have to somehow dig it out.

Fabric here is insanely cheap! I bought a 2.5 meters of heavy wool to make myself a warm winter coat (because I did not bring one with me) and 1 meter of a beautiful blue brocade to line it with. I have seen both of these fabrics for sale in Canada at over $30/meter. At the very least in Canada I would have paid over $100 for all of this (only 3.5 meters of cloth). Here we paid 80 kwai ~ $17. Light cottons are only 5 kwai/meter ~ less than $1! Since buying made clothing can get pretty pricey, I'm looking forward to making my own clothing. This has been a hobby of mine, but I think I will enjoy it being a little more serious!

Since we can not add pictures on here, I am adding them on Facebook instead. If you send me a friend request I will gladly add you to my list where you can see pictures if you would like. I'm under Jessica Gerbrandt Frey. There are two: one is a blank head and the other is picture. Which one do you think is me?

2 comments:

Carol said...

Oh, the lure of cheap and great fabric! I would be climbing stacks all day long!
Love, Mom

The Freys said...

I think you're the blank head.