I spawned in an island world -to my delight- in the first 1.8 game. I promptly went out swimming in search of a cool island.

And... no trees... no animals... just islands with grass. I managed to find a mine shaft in the bottom of the ocean, got some wood and made a boat.

Searched for a while longer (until I reached x:906 y:-7034) and finally found an island I want to settle on. Along the way I found an island full of pigs, so that long with the bread from the mine shaft should keep me okay for a while.

The problem is, still no wool. After searching 50-75 islands, only ONE had trees or animals. And that was only pigs. I have saps, so I should do okay on wood. And I should be able to make bread, I think. But if I lose focus and get killed by something than I'll go back to spawn. And I'd hate that, so much so I am willing to cheat a little to get a bed. But how would I do that?

tl:dr? Need bed, no sheep, tell me how to cheat.

I was going to say you could steal one. But then I noticed you were talking about Minecraft.

If there is grass sheep will spawn. Other wise you can hope for a chest with wool in it.

Back in my day, we didn't have beds, and had to hike in the snow, to and from the spawn, uphill, both ways!

I am pretty sure you have to download a mod or edit a file to allow developer commands. Then it is as simple as typing in an item number like an admin can do online.

I had a little program that would let you edit your inventory outside of the game. But I can't find it! dang. It's somewhere on the interwebs.

Sounds like you haven't really done anything worth keeping, so I'd say just make a new world. I'm pretty sure 1.8.1 fixed the whole "world with nothing but ocean and maybe a fe wsmall islands" thing, too.

Here you go. 
 
http://www.planetminecraft.com/mod/toomanyitems-installer/

If you want to go the mod route, try out the inventory editor called "Too Many Items." It allows you to spawn any item you want into your inventory from inside the game, but at that point the draw to abuse something like that ends up spoiling the game for survival mode. As long as you have some grass that is well lit by torches, animals will spawn there, it's just a matter of how patient you are.

If you're dead set on keeping that world, you could go for an inventory manager like the one Axxol posted above. Personally, if I got that world, I'd just delete it and start a new one.

If you have spiders, you can turn 4 string into one wool. 2x2 on the crafting table.

Yeah. You said you found a mineshaft. Just kill spiders to get enough string to make wool. Your map sounds awesome by the way.