It was also announced at last weekend's Coronation event that Avelyn and I have been selected as the next Baron and Baroness of Skraeling Althing, to be stepping up at Feast of the Hare in November. (Gulp)
So that leads me to a bit of an update on my most popular post about where to go when doing fabric shopping in Montreal.
Avelyn, Emelote and I did a stealth trip to Montreal a week ago after we found out we had been selected (Their Majesties kindly gave the candidates a bit of notice of Their decision so preparations could start under the cover of secrecy). We wanted to see what fabric we could find, so we could get garb production going - six weeks will go by super quick.
So we didn't do any social media posts or anything to suggest we had snuck across the border into Dragon Dormant on a recon mission. :)
We hit many of the same stores as last time, but the timing was a bit different (we went about a month or two later this time), so what each store had available had shifted. We were also looking for different things than when we were shopping for garb for AElfwyn's knighting.
So without further ado, I'll get to the updates. Please read the original post as well for more detailed background and thoughts:
The stores:
A C Textiles
7390 Rue St-Hubert
This was our first stop since we had so much luck here last time. The wool selection wasn't as great but prices were certainly still reasonable. I'd say he was on the lower price end for sure. We were able to get about 8 meters of red wool, plus about 4 meters of a nice green wool.
The owner told us that he's starting to think about closing/retiring, so while the store is still full of stuff he probably won't be bringing anything more in unless its specifically for a customer. He'll probably still be open until next summer at least, but he's certainly pricing to sell.
C&M Textiles
7500 Rue St-Hubert
Definitely found the same thing as last time, they are very high end but the prices at the Montreal store are much more affordable than in Ottawa, so its worth the trip. They had a sale on all the wool, so yay us. :)
We found some really light weight wools and ended up buying a couple of different red wools, plus some cream. We also got a really good deal on some light blue wool that had some sun damage on the fold down the middle (but we can work around it when its on sale for $10 / m). They are still in the upper tier price-wise, but they have really high quality stuff and the store is pretty well organized so its easy to find things. Staff seemed helpful. We also got some swatches for some of their higher end wools for future consideration.
Tissus Marina
7515 rue Saint-Hubert
We hit the jackpot here, but for a bit of a sad reason. Tissue Marina was having a liquidation sale. She said she was closing within days, so she's probably closed by now. The couple of months difference in timing for this visit meant she had a huge selection of wools compared to last time. We got a huge roll of red wool (ended up buying 19 m of it) at $5.99 / m, plus some other really lovely green and yellow. Emelote also found some black/brown wool that she's been searching for for years so she was super happy. We dropped most of our money here, the clearance deals were just too good to pass up in some cases.
The owner did say that while she is closing the store front and selling her notions and other fabric, she will likely still sell the higher end fabric - just direct to customers. So we gave her our contact info to arrange future purchases for those in Skrael who always need wool and linen. We've got your back Skraels :).
Tissues St-Hubert
7399 rue Saint-Hubert
and
Textile Couture Elle
7361 Rue St-Hubert
We spent so much money at Tissue Marine that we skipped these two for this trip.
Goodman Carlyle
7282 Rue St-Hubert
By this point we were being picky since we'd already bought so much at the first three stops. They'd reorganized the store so it took us a bit to find the wools, and there wasn't anything that jumped out at us in the colours we were looking for this time. Most of the rolls weren't labeled for content or price either (which we noted last time), so we ended up just browsing through and then moving on. They still have a lot of selection, just didn't hit the mark for us this time.
Sam Textiles
7195 Rue Saint-Hubert
Didn't buy a stitch here this time, and if anything the staff were even more irritating. They had the same high quality linen as last time in the correct colours, but the prices were still high and that wasn't what we were hunting for this time. The wool section was OK, but even the sale prices were easily double what we were paying at the other stores (at least $35-40, if not more, for essentially the same fabric)
The staff (maybe he's the owner? Think he was there last tie as well) was hovering right beside us interjecting into our conversations, and just making us feel very uncomfortable. Last time we bought stuff because it was the only place that had what I was looking for. This time, not so much. We really just wanted to cover our bases.
