Another Great Shopping Trip

Yup, I was off today on another great shopping experience! This time it started out as meeting a friend for coffee and maybe breakfast. However, it quickly turned into an all-day-long quilt and fabric store hopping adventure! We started out with cappachino at Sheetz, a 30-minute drive to Brookville, PA to a wonderfully bigger-than-imagined quilting/fabric store. This place was just filled with goodies! I purchased almost $70 worth of goodies and I don't even quilt! LOL

I bought some material for quilted pot holders for my BIL. FYI, as a family joke, he hates pink flamingos. And, knowing this, I always buy him something flamingoish. His birthday is in May...and he's getting a grilling kit, complete with flamingo pot holders! The green grass material is going to be the binding, the tan will be the backing and the flamingo material will be the front of the pot holder.

I also seen a beautiful chenille scarf hanging on display, complete with the pattern. I love scarves and this was something *different*...I just had to have it. So I asked for the pattern, tried to figure out how to do it, looked up the fabric requirements and headed to the flannel display! I found several flannels that I really liked and a couple that would really work for this project. So I narrowed it down to two different ones...then picked the one that I have the least of in that particular color. Red and black it is!

From that quilt store, we were off to the next one...another 30-minute drive to Clarion, PA. We vaguely knew where this store was, but we found it easily. Not as big as the first and completely different merchandise. I found some roving for felted soaps, but since Frances gave me a whole bag full of it, I managed not to cave in to the "buy it" temptation.

Then it was off to lunch; it was after 3 p.m., we were starved! We ate at a great steak house in the Clarion Mall. On the way through the mall to JoAnn Fabrics we passed by a jewelery store. I glanced into the case and skidded to an abrupt stop. I've always had a thing for black onyx but usually don't like the usual settings they use for this stone. WELL, here's what caught my attention...I've taken so many pictures of this ring and just can't quite get it just *right*. The stone is a marquis shape, one side has a pink-gold leaf and the other side had a green-gold leaf...the band is the usual gold color and then there is a gold strap over the stone, running from one leaf to the other leaf. It's very unusual looking and is really *me*! Yes, it came home with me! The best part...it was 50% off! All totaled it was $72!!! Oh, just ingore my fingernails, the plant job has just about done them in! One more thing, it's on my left hand because, after many attempts, I determined that I can not work a digital camera left-handed! LOL

The drive home was uneventful. It started snowing while we were eating lunch. By the time we got home we had more than three inches of snow on the ground/road. Good thing we've had a lot of snow in the past couple of weeks. At least everyone have relearned their winter driving skills!