Spotlight
I don’t know how other people pace themselves through the early part of each week. My step lengthens as I slog my way to Hump Day (Hey! Everyone knows Hump Day is the middle of the week, the hump of the week, that once you’re over it, it’s all freewheelin’ downhill to the weekend.) Other than that, my week spins around Spotlight, the sewing emporium, every homemaker’s Nirvana, and how many emails from them bounce into my Inbox. I get a lot! They always start, ‘Julie …’ and I’m sucked in just like that. They’re talking to me. Get it? To me! There are always deals, usually just for two days. Sometimes they’re extended to five days. And that’s exciting as I get an extra three days to dream about all the things I might not buy and would never use. But I love to see all the things that other people are crazy about: buttons, knitting needles, fabric, spools and reels, felt and foam and quilting bits and bobs …
Spotlight is not just sewing paraphernalia. I might have to change my group of friends because why did not one of them think of making me a cake festooned with raspberries, silver baubles, baby meringues, and inedible red flowers for my birthday? Like the one on the Spotlight site.
It’s a scary thrill to trawl page after page looking at things I don’t want or don’t need and to puzzle at stuff that is a must-have for quilters, knitters, sewers and appliquers. It’s another world, and my head starts spinning, but before clicking out, I always check my online trolley to be sure there is nothing in it. I’d die, I mean, nearly die, if a courier van turned up with miniature Kens, lime green disposable party plates, plastic Champagne flutes and chenille pompoms. But I can’t unsubscribe.
My mother was a milliner before she married, and something keeps me spellbound, enmeshed in Spotlight’s tentacles. The truth is, I want a pair of dressmaking shears. I don’t know why I want them. I can’t sew on a button. My children would never wear my knitted atrocities. I can’t cut out a pattern or even make paper dolls. But I want them, the dressmaking shears. I want to hear the sound they make cutting through fabric on a wooden table. That sort of crunchy sound as a sharp metal edge cuts a swathe through a crisp cotton fabric without snagging, the sound of the metal shears bouncing across the wooden table as if they have a mind of their own. Once I get a pair of dressmaking shears, all will be right with the world. I’m sure of it.
