A Week and a Wedding, Part 1

My cousin Lucy got married last Saturday, on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. Her mother and my dad were siblings. Lucy also works at Nordstrom. She and DD#2 see each other fairly often. The seven of us—my mother, my sister and her fiancé, DD#1 and DSIL, DD#2, and I—rented an Airbnb and spent a long weekend together.

All of my trips have a thousand moving parts. I actually left here right after church last Sunday. I drove to Spokane and spent the night and was at the BMW dealer bright and early Monday morning to drop off the car. My station wagon is a diesel and requires the addition of diesel exhaust fluid every several thousand miles. The “Add Diesel Exhaust Fluid” warning light came on the day Sunnie, Robin, and I went to Missoula. The husband filled the DEF tank when I got home, but the warning light wouldn’t go off. Part of the warning system includes a counter that counts back from 1000 miles, and when it gets to zero, the car won’t start again once it is shut off. It is a known issue with this system that urea crystals build up on the sensor inside the tank and cause it to malfunction. The husband has flushed the tank with distilled water in the past to dissolve the crystals, but this time, the warning light wouldn’t go out. I knew I couldn’t get to Seattle and back before those 1000 miles expired.

At least the BMW has a good sense of timing. I called Kevin and made an appointment to drop the car off and leave it in Spokane for the week. On the way over, the passenger’s side door locks started to malfunction. I told Kevin to fix everything that popped up on the diagnostic report, and if they got bored and ran out of things to do, the car probably could stand to have the front end aligned before I get new snow tires this winter. For all its issues, my car gets 40 mpg and I don’t want to give it up before I have to.

[The husband opined that if it broke down on the way, I should set it on fire and we would mail the ashes to the EPA. Kevin also told me that if it weren’t for the emissions components, he would rarely see those cars in the service department except for oil changes.]

I dropped off the car, Kevin got me a ride to the airport, I picked up the rental car, and was on my way. I had a 3 pm alterations appointment at the Nordstrom at Alderwood Mall, north of Seattle, where DD#2 worked as an assistant manager after graduation. The dress fit well in the hips but—wonder of wonders—needed to be taken in at the bust. It was a fairly simple alteration but one I did not want to tackle myself, and because I had bought the dress at Nordstrom, I took advantage of their alterations service. The seamstress fitted and pinned the dress and promised to have it done by Friday.

DD#2 and I went out to dinner. I must have done something right with those kids because both of them manage to find the most excellent restaurants. We went to a Mexican place in Ballard. I had scallop and bacon tacos.

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DD#2 picked me up on Tuesday morning. We drove to Nordstrom downtown, to her office, where I dropped her off. She has to go to the office two days a week now. I then took the car (a Jetta) to the VW dealer for an oil change. They had it done in an hour and I was back on the road, this time to the area down by the airport south of Seattle. I started at a place in Renton called Fabrics for Less. Had I been looking for trims, home dec fabric, or anything polyester, I would have hit the jackpot there. They were slim on garment fabrics, however. I then stopped in at Quality Sewing and Vacuum, in Tukwila, where I picked up a quilting ruler and one of these, from Traditional Primitives:

I had seen this in action on a quilting video. I like my stiletto and use it often when piecing, so I am eager to try this one.

After that, it was Joann Fabrics and then to the mall. My family has long been under the impression that I hate to spend money on clothes. That is not true. I hate to spend money on poor quality, badly fitting clothes that I end up not wearing. I bought a lot of new clothing on this trip. The stores are stocked with merchandise again, and at least a couple of CEOs got the message that some middle-aged women don’t want to wear low-cut jeans and crop tops. I had much better luck finding clothing that fit in colors that I want to wear, including a hot pink denim jacket (!).

I made myself adhere to one set of rules: I had to love whatever I bought—as in, I would have been sad to leave Seattle without it—and I was ruthless about it fitting properly. I stuck mostly to buying key pieces that I wouldn’t want to make myself. I did really well at Macy’s, although DD#2 pointed out that I was shopping at her competition. I noticed that there were a lot of items in knit ponte. I bought a pair of gorgeous green ponte pants and also a collarless black ponte jacket. DD#2 explained that ponte was big this year because people have been working at home (in athleisure wear and PJs) for two years and want comfortable office attire. Ponte is perfect.

I needed to be back downtown to retrieve DD#2 at 4:30 pm, so I arranged my route such that I could spend an hour at Pacific Fabrics. I haven’t been there in a couple of years. They used to have stores all over Seattle, but closed all but the one by the stadium. Their selection of garment fabrics was vast and included a lot of the lines put out by companies like Robert Kaufman (purveyors of Kona Cotton). I bought some Kaufman Brussels Washer Linen (a rayon/linen blend) and this gorgeous Ruby Star Society rayon challis:

I retrieved DD#2 from work and we went out for dinner.

On Wednesday, I did more shopping—I’ll do a review of the entire fabric haul later this week—and picked up food to have on hand at the Airbnb. My mother was the last to arrive, in the evening, and we all settled in for the rest of the wedding week festivities.