Ali Baba's (ribbon) cave

While in Vegas recently, a friend (Patricia) and I went on a mission (for her): to visit "the ribbon lady." Patricia has been buying ribbon from Carole, the ribbon lady, for roughly a decade and had never met her in person.

Carole has, in essence, a ribbon store in a large, clean garage on her property. The store is dedicated to the wide world of ribbon - vintage, new, specialty, homemade, etc. (I confess to not knowing any more ribbon types - Patricia will mock me for this). Carole also has an eBay store, as well as a "ribbon of the month" club. Wound-up yards of ribbon arrive in a box every month, sweetly filling little cupcake papers. My description isn't doing it justice; please see here.

In truth, I never knew there were this many kinds of ribbon. If you are a crafty person, these pictures will be right up your alley. Instead of being attracted to it from an artistic, I-can-only-fathom-the-possibilities standpoint, I found it fascinating from a scientific one. Where does one find all these different types of ribbon? What quantities must one store to keep up with customer demand? How much money does it cost to buy all this ribbon to then re-sell it yourself? And so on.

Not being a ribbon fanatic, I explored the store for about ten minutes. Then I went outside, sat in the glorious Nevada sun, and played ball with Carole's bouncy black lab, Cali.

After an hour and a half, I practically needed a crowbar to remove Patricia from the store. Thank goodness we had a dinner date to get to, or we would have been there forever! =>~