My friends were in town this weekend. Yay! I always like to see them. And their baby. He's so cute! We went to Alpine Village, which is a German shopping mall of sorts. It has a German restaurant and grocery store, and then other little stores of other kinds, most of them featuring some kind of German stuff. I used to work near there, and the grocery store has a cafeteria connected to it where my friends and I used to eat lunch regularly. They have soup and bread for $2. The bread was the real attraction (yum!), but as long as you avoid the split pea and lentil (ick), the soup is pretty good too!

I did go to the stitching shop, looking for some fabric for QG, but no dice. She has mostly aida. I think not. So I ordered some fabric from ABC Stitch. I ordered cream lugana, as I had a piece in my stash and liked the floss toss, and then I ordered some potato to do a floss toss on. We'll see when they get here.

We had lunch at the restuarant, and then there's a swap meet on the side of the parking lot, so we went in there. I didn't find anything I wanted to buy, although my friends bought a couple things. What caught my attention was a booth right in the front that was selling those MagnaDoodle things (you know, like on Friends). Someone had written on one of them "We're all Americans." Then quit flying the Mexican flag! (Sorry, ladies. This immigration issue really gets my dander up! You probably noticed.)

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I added a new blog to my blogroll. The Stitching Memes Blog. I should go find the Stitching Bloggers Question blog too. Let's do a couple of these stitching memes...

1. How old were you when you started stitching?
I was about 12

2. How many years have you been at it?
ummm..16! Wow!

3. Self taught or did someone teach you?
Self taught. I had a beginners book. You should have seen me with 8 needles for 8 colors, working 1 row at a time! lol! By project 2 or 3, I had learned to do one color at a time!

4. What was your first project?
A little carousel horse out of the beginners book. It disappeared though, I wish I knew what happened to it.

1. what is your favorite count and type of fabric?
I like lugana. Cashel is good too. 28ct, but 25 and 32 are good too. 36 is stretching a little....anything smaller than 36 better be silk gauze!

2. Do you use hand-dyed or tried them at all?
I do use hand-dyed if it's appropriate. I use them mostly for Miras. For TWs, they're kind of a waste since TWs are mostly solid stitching, and for other pieces, they aren't always appropriate.

3. Any favorite fabric colors, hand-dyed or regular?
I like em all, lol. The hand-dyes though, I am a little more picky. I tend to like the more monochromatic ones more than the ones that have 4 colors swirled together.

4. Have you tried opalescent fabrics and do you like them?
I think I did do an ornament on an opalescent during an ornament RR (be sure to join us at the ornament RR board! Shameless self plug here!) and it was ok, but I found it hard to count the fabric threads around the metallic threads. In my general stitching, I'd probably use them sparingly, although I must say Mira's Winter Queen looks wonderful on white opalescent!

You know, I'm not into using stuff for the sake of using it. Stuff like hand-dyed or opalescent fabrics or metallic or overdyed threads. If I'm going to use it, I want it to add to the design, not compete with it. Some people like to add bf or braid to every inch of a design, or use a hand-dye fabric for every single design. I'm not like that. Some designs look better on solid fabrics. Sometimes less is more with sparkle. I'm all about balance and moderation in these things.