Getting ready for work didn’t go so smoothly today. I showered upstairs with Mark, and used his more-skin-drying soap, instead of mine – the bar of Castille soap I keep up there. “No problem”, I thought, “I’ll just lotion up downstairs.” I decided to use the old patchouli lotion, instead of cracking open my pristine pump bottle of Jergens. But, reaching for the patchouli stuff, I knocked one of my favorite hair pins – the giant one that can be used to hold all my hair in an up twist – into the flushing toilet. Even plunging didn’t get it back. I’d noticed that the all-natural patchouli lotion seems to be separating, so I shook the bottle really well to try to get actual moisturizer, rather than just a thinnish splurt of perfume – but I still got a lot of the thin stuff, and had to debate whether to simply chuck the whole bottle, or keep it – afterall, the bottle, sans the content and the pump, can be recycled…. plus it’s at least 1/3 full…. Oh what’s a conservation minded person to do? Sigh.
When I was a kid, my mom and I used to go to a notions store called Parker, Button & Bow. Notions are sewing accessories – buttons, zippers, ribbons, hooks & eyes, snaps & fasteners. They also sold nice hair accessories – barrettes and hair pins, plastic and metal made to look like tortoiseshell and so much better quality than the crap that can be had in the hair aisle at Walgreens or Target.
There aren’t really notions stores anymore – only big warehouse fabric or craft stores, that do have sewing notions, but not usually hair stuff. I remember going to a big fabric place out in the suburban wilds of Minnesota, with Rach and Lea and her daughter, Liz. I got a card of little embroidered rosettes that I thought I would sew into the necks of t-shirts – haven’t done that. And a piece of a batik-looking printed cotton, to make into an elastic waist skirt, traced from a skirt I already had that fit well, that I bought from J. Jill – I’m wearing it now, the one I made, not the one I copied. It doesn’t hang quite as nicely as the J. Jill one, that’s lined, but it’s good for hot summer days.
I used to use ribbons from Parker, Button & Bow to hold the end of my braid. Now I use cloth covered soccer hairbands, but it doesn’t seem like they make this cloth kind anymore. When I’ve looked to replace the pack I’ve got, all I can find is rubbery ones. Yuck. Maybe I’ll have to go back to the ribbons.
france-luxe-hair-pins - that can be bought online
PS – just spent $37 to get these hair pins in all three colors, plus a fancy barrette, France Luxe brand, but sold & delivered to my door, by Amazon.
