OO7 and the dress...

The Crystal Ball is only 2 weeks away and thank God I was fortunate enough to find a good seamstress with a friend. I gave her a picture of the dress and was then advised about the amount and type of fabric I needed for the dress, so ventured to a HUGE fabric store to get what I needed or at least...what I thought I needed.

The thing is here, if the person you are talking to isn't western, you are going to get confused (as I'm sure is the case if it was vice versa). Ami - The Chinese Australian lady told me to "go to the fabric store at Al Khamis on the left, not the right" (ok, so she got it backwards...which way was she facing when she was giving me these directions?) and ask for the 150 good quality silk @ RO 6.5, not the RO 3 crap if I wanted a good dress.

So I went to the left store, asked for the best silk and it was RO 3 but looked nice. They had the Sapphire blue I wanted and all was good. Except they didn't have the 4m I required (or the right coloured/textured lining) so I needed to choose another colour. Now, I was trying to stay away from black, but was avoiding Pink (for fear of looking like the Oman version of the UK's Jordan) and Red (for fear of wanting to break out the Spanish Flamenco dance @ the ball and shouting 'ole') so I chose a teal/emerald green colour...beautiful...but they had just under 4m and I didn't want to take the chance.

So off I went across the way to the forbidden left-hand side fabric store and low and behold...they were the right place, but lacking in the sapphire blue and emerald green also :( They had the RO 6.5 Japanese Crepe Silk and while it was nice I wasn't sold that it was WAY better quality, but when you are paying RO 39 for a dress you want to make it last. So I bought 4m in purpley-blue material and 3m (@ 900bz/m) of purpley lining, so all was good and I was done. I couldn't bear anymore fabric or cricket conversations ("Gilly!") with the guys from the store :) Nearly 2 hrs in total was enough already...

A quick walk across the parking lot back to Ami and she was happy with my fabric, happy that her advice panned out, and we had a deal for my dress to be ready for the ball. Here is what I'm hoping for, but in Purpley-blue:



A few days later, Duma was mortified that we had to go to a tailor to get his measurements and buy fabric for his tux. Yes, this ball is black tie and means that he has to buy one or he will be the freak of Muscat, so he sulked a little but came along anyways and I was proud that he did.

Our friend have us directions and I'm wikimapia challenged so I grabbed the coordinates, which in a desert location don't often work (roads spring up FAR too often and you hear the phrase "recalculating" all too often by your GPS) but we eventually managed to find it. They measure him up and unfortunately only had enough fabric in the most expensive cloth (RO 8.5m) so we had to suck it up, much to his disgust! And then came the shirt, bow tie, cummerband and all so it cost more than we bargained for but we didn't have it in us to negotiate...we were exhausted by this stage. Then, we realised we didn't have enough cash to pay for the fabric AND the store was technically closed as it was just after 1pm so we had to dawdle for 3 hrs until they opened again since we couldn't be assed going home and coming back.

When Duma gets "the face", you know he has no more patience...is sulking because he lost a basketball game/challenge/didn't get what he wanted/has spent too much money, so we just left for greener pastures until they opened again.

So we ran some errands and then 30 mins before we had to be back at the tailor, I had a ridiculous urge to wee...AGAIN! I swear, I try and be good and drink 3-4L a day but it just makes me wee more, so we try to stop @ Zakker Mall = no go, closed! So we try and look for other places and I'm literally busting, swaying in the car and singing to get my mind off it, but every song on Hi 95.9FM is about waterfalls, rain or something of the like...so we stop at the old faithful McDonald's and surprisingly the toilets are clean and free, and Duma gave my first dibs on the mens toilet since the women's one was taken - BLESS!

And then we get back to the tailors and it costs us more money than we originally thought but we didn't care, we just wanted it done (but still cheaper than getting one tailor made back home, but thats not the point he says). But seriously, for this look I don't mind giving up my first months paycheck... damn!