Retail Questions

I went to town to run errands yesterday and came home with lots of questions. I am also heartily sick and tired of people turning left in front of me when they don’t have the right of way, but that’s another story.

I stopped in at Walmart—we need replacement bags for our 12-gallon Shop Vac—and checked the Rack of Mystery Fabric. The rack had been restocked and was quite full. I picked up a few more pieces of fabric to use as muslins for future patterns, although again, if they turn out to be wearable muslins, that will be a bonus.

I headed over to Hobby Lobby. They have changed their sales rotation and I am still trying to figure out the pattern. Fabric was 40% off this week. When I got to the fabric section, however, I discovered that a good third of the bolts were gone. The department was looking quite empty. I eventually found all those bolts a few aisles away, marked down on clearance.

Hmmmm.

I went back to look at what fabric was still on the displays and just about fell over when I saw they were stocking some new Robert Kaufman Essex Linen in both solids and prints. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the prints, especially because I cannot find those fabrics on either the Hobby Lobby website or the Kaufman website. They looked like they belonged to the same collection of prints in black, red, and cream. I check Hobby Lobby every couple of days and haven’t seen these before, so they must have come in recently, although the bolts were down to just a couple of yards each.

I bought some Essex Linen in a lovely pink color. I need to make half a dozen more Bear Paw baby quilts to have on hand and this is my favorite fabric for those. Pink is a color I don’t have in the stash.

The supply chain disruptions mean that I have no good handle on what’s new and what is old stock whose delivery was delayed. The fact that so much has been put on clearance says to me that they are trying to make room for new stock, but the fact that I can’t find those prints on the Robert Kaufman site—or anywhere else on the internet—makes me wonder if they are last season’s offerings. This is where the Fabric.com website would come in very handy, as they usually carried overstocks and leftovers. Is that line so new it hasn’t been listed yet? Or is this some kind of Hobby Lobby exclusive?

I have so many questions. I will be curious to see what is in the Spokane Hobby Lobby stores when Robin and I get there. We’re rather in a backwater here in Kalispell and our retail landscape doesn’t always track with what is happening elsewhere.

I always stop at Joanns on my way home from town, but it’s getting depressing to go in there anymore. I was perusing the remnant rack when I heard a lady behind me ask the employee at the cutting counter about their store hours. The employee answered that they were open from 11-5 every day.

I don’t know how a store stays viable when it’s only open six hours a day.

If I were the CEO of Joann Fabrics, I think I might be a bit nervous right now. I don’t think their business model is sustainable. They are pushing online shopping hard. Their sales schedule makes less and less sense. They offer coupons on regular-price items, but when you get to the store, everything is on sale and the coupons are worthless. (I once used a coupon on a chocolate bar because that was all it was good for.) The Kalispell store seems to survive mostly on sales of flannel and fleece, but even if they carried more apparel fabric, it’s all in muddy earth tones and ugly prints. I said to the husband that based on what I saw yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hobby Lobby and even Walmart put our Joanns out of business.

The Super 1 grocery store in downtown Kalispell, where I usually shop, has taken out two registers and replaced them with six self checkout registers. I know that people have strong opinions about self checkout. I use them at Walmart because they never have enough cashiers and I don’t want to stand in line. (Also, I am not fond of making small talk with people.) Target has four self checkouts and I wish they would add more, because the other 12 checkout lines are never open and the four self checkouts are always busy. I am less inclined to use the self checkouts at the grocery store because when I go—which is only every other week—I usually have a full cart.

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Our internet (CenturyLink) was down for a few hours yesterday afternoon. A couple of places in town were having issues, too. I’m about ready to sign up for Starlink. CenturyLink has been having more frequent problems lately.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to work on today. I redid the sleeve seams on that waterfall cardigan yesterday and the fit is better. I looked at my black one to see what the fronts look like. They are rounded off, so I’m going to round off the fronts on the blue one before I finish that edge. I’ve traced a couple of new patterns for sweater knits, including this one:

This is the Cocoon Cardigan by Patterns for Pirates. It looks to be a quick sew and another something to throw on over a T-shirt. And I want to try sewing my sweaters instead of knitting them.