St Valentine's Day to Present

Wednesdy - DH is the greatest guy in the world! Not only does he put up with me and my whims, he sent me a dozen beautiful roses in a beautiful red vase - to my office! I was really surprised. We had discussed only trading cards for St Valentine's Day because we had exchanged fairly expensive gifts for Christmas (me - spinning wheel, DH - 32 in flat screen LCD tv). The roses really made my day! Thanks DH!

Thursday, I stayed home from work...We had gone to an Italian restaurant for dinner Wednesday night...I had white pizza. I guess there was too much (way way too much) garlic on it and it made me very ill.

Friday, went to work...I had about 60 e-mails from Thursday! GGGRRRRR. This is really getting old and I am really getting burned out quickly. That is all I am going to say on this subject.

Saturday, glorious Saturday! Met with the other ladies from OAKS at Barnes & Noble for a morning of knitting and a little drop spindling. DH stayed with me. He brought the laptop and played POGO. A couple of my friends came by and they tried to study in the cafe, but really couldn't get in the grove, so DH and friends entertained each other. We (me, DH & friends) had lunch with Jody and then we all went our separate ways for the day - Jody to Chez Casuelle in Leesburg, friends to their place and DH & me to Mount Dora!!!! DH dropped me off in front of Knit -N- Needle Nook and went home! As always, the owners of the shop greeted me with a smile. I had some time to kill because DH wouldn't be back to get me for about an hour and half, so I had plenty of time to "graze" around in the dollar room and on the $.50 shelf. After my allotted time was up, I had spent $100.

Several weeks ago, the owners of the shop had opened up their garage (where the remaining 60 to 70% of the stock is) to several ladies. I was not aware of this little outing. I have been reading all of the necessary Yahoo groups and periodically asking the owners when they were going to be doing it again. As I was checking out, the owner told me they would be more than happy to have me come out to their house without the group, so we made arrangements for me to go last night! All I can say is HOLY COW! I was not expecting what I saw, in more ways than one! There were probably 40 huge, black, industrial size garbage bags stuffed FULL of yarn. Luckily, they had already gone through the bags and had sorted based on yarn type (cotton, wool, acrylic, etc). They laid out a moving pad on their garage floor told me to sit down and they would bring the yarn to me. Since they knew I am only interested in the cotton and cotton blends, they brought those bags and dumped them in front of me! I love yarn! I ended up spending about $187 including tax! Not to shabby for about 350 skeins! The story doesn't end here. I was taken on a tour of their beautiful home. Lora has THREE rooms dedicated to her fiber arts...one for sewing (normal bedroom size), one for planning and bigger projects (sun room type room running almost the entire length of the house) and a loft upstairs for knitting classes (huge loft, I think they said it was about 1400 sq ft). Let's start with the small room, she had a beautiful floor standing swift, a jumbo, jumbo ball winder, a ball winder, surger, blind seam machine, a couple of dress forms, etc). In the sun room area (there is a long bar/island in the room), she had several knitting projects she is working on. She also has all of the "catalogs" from the yarn manufacturers she will be retailing for in here (this made me even more excited for the renos to get under way!). In the loft, there was MORE YARN! The yarn up here was the more "up scale" and newer yarn. Some of it was from the shop and some of it she had bought as stock for the remodeled store. YUMMY STUFF! Debbie Bliss, Noro, Dale of Norway, Cherry Tree Hill, etc. She has a little area set up for the knitting instruction she is doing now. There is a little office alcove space too. Here she a computer, and lots of binders with free patterns she had found on-line or during her (literal) worldwide yarn shopping excursions. Lora and Tom are amazing people and I hope I can get to know them better!