A trip to Fabric Crush

I've been wanting to get back into the sewing mode and just as luck would have it, I stumbled across a lovely new quilting blog Tallgrass Prairie Studio. Well, it's not new, but new to me. And the luck continued because as it turned out Jacquie was in town to visit a friend and do a little talk at Fabric Crush. The store had recently moved from Magnolia to the Wallingford Center and I had been wanting to check it out. It was as if the Sewing Gods were putting this out there in the universe for me. 

So of course, I had to appease them. And I went. And I loved it. Both the store and Jacquie and her fabulously beautiful, yet simple modern style quilts. Take a look.

Jacquie and her quilts. If I was a better blogger, I'd have the names of these patterns she designed, but alas, I am not. They sure are pretty though!

I especially loved this salavage quilt. These are the salvage edges of fabrics she's used over the years. Isn't this a great creative way to use all of the fabric?

Ohhh...ahh...it was like a fireworks show for the quilting fans in the room as we got to look up close and touch all the pretty fabrics. So fun and inspirational!

Moral of the story: There is safety in numbers

This past weekend a few friends and I headed to Tacoma for the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival. It was a gray, rainy February day but we were all looking forward to a little knitting, a little yarn shopping and hanging out with friends.

After a quick trip around the market place, I was pretty proud of myself for showing some serious restraint. I had a shopping plan. I wanted to pick up some Socks that Rock to make another clapotis. I have one, but I don't love and I don't wear it. I want to love it. And I want to wear it. I've learned a lot from my last one so I'm going to make another one.
After we all purchased a few things, it was time for lunch. We hopped on the light rail and headed into town for some beer, burgers and knitting. It was fun. Our waitress was just learning to knit so she was thrilled we were all sitting at her table.

Back at the retreat, we visited with more friends, chatted about books, podcast, movies and just generally enjoyed a rainy Saturday without thinking about things that needed to be cleaned, cooked or whatever back home. But then it was time to load up and head back to Seattle. Before that, however, Katie decided she needed one more trip to market place to check on some yarn. Not wanting to abandon our friend, we all decided to accompany her.

And that's when it happened. In less than 5 minutes into the marketplace, we all split up, ran around and fell down. A lot. We all fell onto lots of piles of soft, lovely yarn with our credit cards slipping through the card machines as we went down. And then we got up, laughed and ran to another booth where the same thing happened.

(So pretty. I was drawn to lots of pinks and reds for some reason. They were all very Meg like colors.)

When it was all said and done, we decided there was safety in numbers. But it sure was fun to split up. Now, to go play with my new yarn.

When a yarn store shuts down

It's always a sad thing when a yarn store closes their doors.
It means no place to go for help with a project.
No place to sit and visit with fellow women who you may not know when you walk in, but are friends when you leave.
It means no place to just stroll and look and touch the pretty, pretty things.


But....


It also means a SALE!!! The store in question is my mom's favorite yarn store in Eagle, Idaho: Handmade. It's a fabulous store in a beautiful custom made log cabin house with over stuffed chairs, couches and shelfs filled to the rafters with yarn.

Thier sale: 50% off everything. EVERYTHING! Unfortunately, I didn't know about this sale before I came for a long weekend visit. I would have better prepared myself for upcoming projects. Instead I just grabbed some pretty yarn that I'm rather fond of.


I purchased 5 skeins of Dream in Color Classy in Worsted Weight. One skein of Some Summer Sky (which will become a Foliage Hat for my sister for Christmas); 2 skeins of Cloud Jungle (to become a hat for the hubby); 1 skein of Butter Peeps just because I love the color. They were all sold out of the Dream in Color sock yarn but this is still quite the steal!


If you're in the vicinty of Boise, Idaho, I HIGHLY recommend a side trip to Eagle for this fabulous sale!

Urban Craft Uprising!

Sunday I convinced Rebecca to go the Urban Craft Uprising show. Really, it didn't require any convincing at all. In fact, we've already decided go to their Christmas show in order to get some gifts for the good little girls and boys on our lists.

If you haven't been to an Urban Craft Uprising show, you must find one. It's basically like Etsy just popped up in a building in real life. As Rebecca said, these are our people.

Today however, we were just looking for ourselves! And we did find quite a few little treats for ourselves.

Plus, and most importantly, it sparked some creativity in me! Now it's time to get to work!

You know you scored the best deal at a garage sale when...

When you're walking down the street and people are coming up to you and offering your twice the amount you paid for your new treasure.

And here it is:

I've been on the hunt for a silver tinsel 3-ft tall Christmas tree for years. Literally years. I've looked at pre-Christmas sales, Christmas sales and post Christmas sales. I've looked online. I've looked in year round Christmas stores. And nothing. They were either too tall. Or entirely too expensive.

But not this one. I found it at the third house of the annual Bigelow St. neighborhood yard sale in the Queen Anne neighborhood. It was in the back. And the teenage son wasn't quite awake yet. The original $50 price tag was still on it, but nothing else. I asked him how much. He looked at it like he didn't know what it was. He uttered:

"I dunno, $7, $8?" as several other women looked on.

"How about $7?" I said as I handed him the cash and hoped his mother didn't see what he was selling this gem for. Then I high-tailed it out of there before she came outside.

All day, everyone kept asking about the tree. Several other people I passed offered to pay more for the tree, including others holding their own yard sales.

It's like Christmas came early this year for me.

It'll soon be mine!

I've been looking in stores and online for months now. Just keeping my eye out for the perfect deal. And I finally found it. Or, it found me. It showed up in my email inbox yesterday!

And how could I not resist getting my very own swift for only $50 from knitpicks.com! It took me approximately 2.5 seconds to hit the order now button while at the same time fumbling around in my bag for my handy-dandy Visa card!


The best part is (aside for the price!), now that I'll have a craft room of my very own soon, the swift will be able to stay out all the time! I can't wait to start winding yarn!