quilt shops don't have this effect on me

It'd been at least eight years since my last trip up to Acorns & Threads. Partially because I haven't been doing any cross stitching, and partially because we moved 50 miles further south and it seems kind of extreme to drive 200 miles round trip to drool over thread and charts if you haven't touched floss or a chart in so many years.

Yesterday, I had to drive up to Portland to run an errand that turned out to be on the same street...and my husband wasn't with me...and it was still early in the afternoon....

Oh dear! I'd forgotten how gorgeous and addictive that place is. Go click over and take a peek at the interior. The store isn't listed in the van's GPS, but I knew it was on Scholls Ferry Road, and which direction to go, so I could get there easily, right?

I'd completely forgotten about that awful intersection where I always mess up because the streets are so weirdly angled. Even with a GPS map showing me which street goes where, it was intimidating.

But we made it there and I managed to resist all of the gorgeous new Halloween designs. I've got Hocuspocusville to play with....and Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage...and all of the Halloween charts I managed to collect when I was still stitching...

But I did bring home this one --



I saw it in a stitching magazine I bought a few weeks back and fell in love, then quickly forgot all about it. But they were having a trunk show and had the stitched sample on the wall and there is just something about seeing a project stitched up that makes me go from "Oh, that's nice..." to "I have GOT to make that myself!"

If they'd had the pattern for Rosetta, I would've bought that one, too. Even though I'm sure stitching it would leave me blind and insane.

There were four or five other charts I would've loved to bring home, but at $16 a piece, even without the specialty flosses and buttons, it would've quickly added up. So I was really, really good and got the chart that doesn't take any speciality stuff and that I can finish with supplies I already own.

Quilt shops are fun, but they don't tempt me the way this place does. Wonder why...