A New Hobby?

I had a great day yesterday - Mom and I went on a little road trip to Muscatine, IA.  First we stopped at Neal's Vacuum & Sewing Center.  They sell vacuums (obviously) - I guess to keep all those threads cleaned up in our sewing rooms, Viking & Baby Lock sewing machines, fabric and lots of patterns and notions.  I found some yummy fabrics - the red star was 50% off - can't beat that!

I have been looking for a pair of small, strong snips to trim fabric when I am making jewelry.  My thumb gets really sore from using scissors all of the time.  I have a pair of these that are really big.  I tried using them for trimming, and they were certainly sharp enough, but it just felt like using hedge trimmers!  Way too big for what I am doing.  So, I was thrilled when I found these 5" snips yesterday.  I can't wait to give them a try.

Then we went down the street to lunch at a great sandwich/coffee shop called Elly's.  It is in a big, old wonderful building among many other quaint shops.  Next to Elly's was a yarn store called Serendipity Yarn Shoppe (can you already tell where this is going?). This is a wonderful shop, you just feel at home as soon as you walk in.  I wish I would have had my camera with me so I could share some of the yummy yarn and awesome knitting projects. I have always loved looking at and fondling yarn, but have never learned how to knit or crochet.  Mom knows how to knit, but it's been a long time and she couldn't remember how to cast on.  So...the owner of the shop, Francy, volunteered to give us (yes, me too!) a lesson!  I told her that I was a quilter and her response was "that's ok...I can still teach you how to knit!".  There were a couple of other ladies hanging out knitting and having a good time.  Francy was very patient with me, and I had a great time!  I'm so excited about my new hobby.  Oh...and did I mention that Francy now carries my jewelry in her shop?  I'm so excited!  Here is the yarn I picked out - I love it!  Red - I'm sure you are all shocked by that choice!  Red is my favorite color, you know.

Hopefully this will someday be a scarf!  After that, Francy says my next project will be a felted bag - which sounds like a great idea to me.  A good friend of my Mom's (Pat) gave me a felted bag that she made and I love it so much - I use it all the time - so I am looking forward to project #2.  After I got home last night, I wanted to knit for awhile to make sure I remembered what I was doing.  Well, you can about imagine how that went, with 3 cats around.  You will never guess who bothered me first.  It was actually Ozzie!!  He was sleeping in the chair, and evidently my dangling yarn caught his attention.  Of course, when he showed interest then Callie had to get involved - curiosity and all.  Grrrr!!!  Didn't take long before they were all locked out of my sewing room, and they were not happy about it!  I worked on my scarf for about an hour before I screwed up!  OH NO!!!!  I tried to fix it by ripping out the last row - thought I would just do the whole row over.  Well, that didn't work, because obviously I have no idea how to rip out knitting and not screw it all up! Now I have made it worse!  Crap!  Guess I will have to wait and see if Mom can fix it.  If not I may have to start over.  But, I'm not discouraged yet!!

Ok, back to our road trip.  After learning to knit, we went on to the newly relocated The Cotton Shop.  It is now officially called  The Little Red Hen.  This has always been a "favorite" shop to go visit.  Now they are located in a house that is also home to a flower shop and greenhouse.  It's actually a nice mix - smells so good in there - I love the smell of fresh flowers.  There are lots of fun things to look at in the shop - wonderful samples, wool, a lot of patterns and books.  They had some really cute pin cushions - I just had to have this pattern:

I also bought a small bag of crushed walnut shells for the filling. I generally just use sand, but thought I would give the shells a try.

We really had a fun day!  It sure wasn't what we planned to do - I had no idea I would have a new hobby by the end of the day (you know, I need more things to do, and more projects!). 

When I was updating the inventory on my website last night I was getting a little more help than I needed - do you recognize these white paws?

Of course, Callie is always so eager to help!

Hope you have a great day!!