One of my HEWI pieces has been so elusive that I had almost given up on it and nicknamed it my unicorn. I've been wanting a full-length black or camel wool (or mostly wool blend) overcoat. I used to have one, when I was married to husband #2, but I got clean & sober and grew out of it as I got healthy. I found a red one on Ebay in the very early aughts, but it wasn't the same and I outgrew it anyway.

I've tried on so many coats, and getting something that fit my arms and shoulders was starting to feel impossible (as evidenced by my struggles with shirts with sleeves lately). Being a stagehand changed my physique in some (apparently) permanent & major ways.

DH gave me money a few winters ago and sent me to buy a new coat because I had outgrown the beautiful suede coat he gave me for our 1st Christmas together in '08. I found a camel colored Calvin Klein thigh length number, and a calf length cream colored one made by Black Rivet (Wilson's Leather house brand, I think?). They're nice coats, wool blends, and I love them, but they weren't that unicorn I had been searching for.

Today, I stopped by a new-to-me Goodwill, hoping to score some trousers or shirts for the job hunt. Found several of each, and was about to head to the fitting room when I noticed their coats were starting to appear on the racks. I tried on every. single. leather. jacket (another HEWI unicorn) on the racks in mens and womens.

Then I saw it. Full length, black, covered in orange fun-fur lint on one shoulder. The fun-fur lint is what caught my eye. I looked at the inside of the coat, and saw that it was Bill Blass. I inspected the material tag and saw that it was mostly wool. Then I saw the size and my heart sank. It said size 2 on the label.

As I stood there torturing myself by looking at the coat's sleeves and shoulders and lining and length, I realized that the arms were awfully big for a size 2. So I tried it on and started waving my arms around in front of me, expecting the boa constrictor sensation to start immediately.

Nope.

The clouds parted, the heavens opened, and a posse of unicorns started singing and farting rainbow glitter on my soul. The coat fit!

I took the coat and one pair of pants to the dressing room to try them on in front of a mirror. (Sadly, I was too busy watching the unicorns fart rainbow glitter to remember to take pictures, and it's too dark to take any in my mirror tonight.) It fit, and it didn't look tight or puckered anywhere, no matter how high i reached overhead or how far I reached out in front of me. It's LONG, just grazing the top of my ankles. Other than being lint, it appears to be in excellent condition. I saw $25 marked in silver sharpie inside and decided it was well worth it I'm buying it even though I don't have any mad money right now and it's easier to ask forgiveness from DH than permission and it's only $25 when I have long been prepared to ask DH for hundreds if I ever found one and YOLO and all that jazz.....

And I marched my happy self to the counter with the pants and coat.

I don't know if the cashier left her glasses at home or what, but she rang that coat up for $8.99 and the pants rang up at $1.75 and I handed her $12 and brought my happy ass home. I'll need to get it professionally cleaned, but I did roll the orange fun-fur lint off of it for now.

I just had to share my joy with the wonderful bunch of fabbers that have taught me to keep searching, ignore the number on the tag and look at the actual garment, and be patient because the unicorn is out there (even if I haven't found it YET). Thank you for teaching me those things, they've been invaluable!