Gone To The Beach: 08.29.2017

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Out and About ~ Hobby Lobby

Hi! Where should we go this week? Yes, let's check out the new Hobby Lobby craft store!

In our ongoing effort to, as my friend L says, ''broaden our horizons'', we decided that this week's road trip would be to the new Hobby Lobby store. I was very excited to hear that Hobby Lobby was coming to our part of the world. However it is NOT close, an hour each way (plus we got lost) and even though I overrode L's GPS to take us on the fast and empty parkways that GPS does not use. L was driving and was a little frazzled, though you'd never know it, she always stays so cool.

All these signs, unreadable at 55 mph!

The Hobby Lobby is in a new strip mall carved out of a pretty maple and sycamore forest, far far away, in the middle of nowhere. It just opened so her car's GPS, usually impressively infallible, could not figure out how to get us home!

But the store itself: brand new, very pretty! No prices on anything yet though. First thing you notice, walking in on a sunny day is how dark the store is.

Very high ceilings with stock packed to the rafters makes it seem very dark and unwelcoming. I lightened these pics so you could see the store interior, but it was dark like above.

It was busy so it was hard to take pictures sometimes. My main mission was to look for yarn since I can now knit again, Mo having grown up enough not to go bonkers at the very thought of a ball of yarn.

Lovely yarn selection, no prices marked or easily found. Most of their yarns are at least part acrylic and I'm a bit of a yarn snob. That said, it seems acrylic has come a long way since my aunt knitted nasty crunchy sweaters for us, years ago.

They seem to specialize in baby yarns. Um, no.

I found this lovely cloud-soft grey yarn for a sweater for Mo.

The rainbow is the arms and turtleneck, here. Mason Dixon colorway, original designer on Ravelry here: Pattern?

They had a similar grey alpaca/ acrylic blend and normally I'd choose an alpaca, even a blend, over 100% acrylic, but the acrylic was much nicer and so soft for Mo, easy wash too.

I did get one skein of the alpaca/ acrylic in ivory because I always buy natural or off white yarns for my huge collection, lol. It could be finger-less mittens or part of my someday striped/ textured offwhite throw of many yarns.

And I got a tryout skein of this beautiful bamboo-silk blend for a possible summer sweater. Bamboo often ''halos'', forms a fuzzy surface sheen, so I only got the one skein for now. Inspiration sweater
or this

Mel had suggested this cotton yarn for a summer sweater, if the bamboo-silk is a fail. But I thought the colors were too sugary bright for me.

There were also fabulous chenille[?] blanket yarns and giant pompoms, for another day. Sometimes I don't think as fast as I should while shopping, too bad. Look at the size of these poms! Wow. Love.

Up to that point HL seemed like a beautiful big Michael's [and, you know, we have two Michael's 15 minutes or less away], with especially nice beads and findings, but as I emerged from the yarn department, I found the fabrics! Not huge but nice selection, different things, including calicoes and homespuns.

Again nothing was priced! If I'd had any clue of the bargain of the fabric prices I'd have bought a lot more.

I got this taupe polka dot that I love, a whole yard!

And this cute horseshoes calico. It was part of a Western cowboys/ ranch themed group, but if you look closely at later 1800's quilts, red calico with tiny horseshoes was very popular and a distinctive motif. Great to add some whimsy to my "Civil War repro'' prints stash.

I always pick up a few fat quarter souvenirs.

The blue will be used, just a tiny bit!---on a Bitty leaf,

...the others with go in my ''cute moderns'' stack. Love lady bugs! And spools. The FQs were marked, at an excellent 1.99 price.

I would have bought more fabric, especially homespuns, for my future project of Cheri Payne's prim Christmas quilt, but as mentioned I had no idea of the prices and also the woman cutting was the slowest worker I have ever seen. She was pleasant but she moved like a slo-mo video, nerve wracking! She cut like she was afraid she'd make a mistake. Snip. Stop. Chat a bit. Snip. Stop, etc. Took 10? minutes to cut two pieces for me. I finally did the folding, I couldn't stand it. Can't imagine how she'll cope on a busy Saturday.
Also in the fabric section, HL stocks beautiful $$$ trims. I wanted to get the beaded fringe for a project I'm doing for a friend, but at about 15.oo a yard I couldn't experiment and she wasn't answering texts. Too bad, because I'm pretty sure we won't go back.

Other notes: Prices for decorative items were high if even marked. A tin pail, distressed duck egg blue, stenciled Farmers Market [for dried flowers or Indian corn etc; or mums?] was 30.00! Like this but a different shape . [I do like it!] A cast metal garden mermaid, maybe 12" high, was I think, 40.oo-ish. Things that would be 6.99 at Home Goods.
Store was clean. Checkout ladies were nice. Parking ample. If it was closer, I'd shop at Hobby Lobby all the time, as they do have sales and online coupons/ phone app coupons. [I forgot to use mine, too bad].

Standing in line I fell in love with this woman's gathering of faux roadside weeds. I loved it for early Fall, so delicate and yet realistic.