Honey, I'm Home

Actually I've been home from San Diego since Monday afternoon. Since then I've worked two days, had the flu and slept for 33 hours and spent a couple hours with Mr. E.

We saw plenty of sunshine, watched two good days of golf and ate lots of yummy food. Unfortunately every time I wanted to take a photo, I didn't have my camera with me (insert sad face). I did get 7 hours of stitching time in on the way to San Diego, a couple hours while we there and 2 more hours on the way home. All in all, it was a great trip.

The best food we had was Bleu Cheese Chips at the Fox Sports Grill. The menu description reads "Homemade potato chips tossed in bleu cheese dressing, then topped with smoked bacon, bleu cheese crumbles, tomatoes and green onion." They were super yummy! The best part is in this past Sunday's Parade Magazine was a recipe for Hot Cumin-Scented Potato Chips with Bleu Cheese Sauce. Very similar, but enough info that I can make my own Bleu Cheese Chips for Super Bowl Sunday.

On Friday we drove from downtown San Diego to Del Mar and I was lucky enough to find three needle work shops along the way with only a minimal detour from the I-5.

My first stop was Needle Craft Cottage in Pacific Beach. I didn't know I would be driving by this store on the way to the other two shops so it was a pleasant surprise to see it. When I told the clerk I was visiting the area she immediately gave me a wonderful tour of the store, or should I say cottage? It was truly a cottage converted to a great shop full of yarn, threads and needle work kits. After some browsing I chose four threads from her clearance bin of Rainbow Gallery threads. The Angora feels as soft as it looks and I can't wait to give it a try. Gold Rush, Tiara and Treasure Braid are metallic threads. The skein of variegated over-dyed floss is from Needle Necessities.
My next stop was Needlepoint of La Jolla. Wow! This store was incredible! The owners, Carrell and Bill, were great. I asked Carrell to help me choose a palette of threads for around $30. She put in front of me a broad selection of Soy Luster Solids from the The Pure Palette. I chose yellow and red. Next she showed me Silk 'N Colors from The Thread Gatherer. Deep green and deep blue were added to the pile. A few sections down we added a purple overdyed Perle 8 from Threadworx. Then for fun I chose two more threads from Rainbow Gallery - white Neon Rays, a sparking needlepoint ribbon, and Mandarin Floss, a 100% bamboo thread.
Then, as I was paying for my threads, Bill included these 2 skeins of super soft heavy thread for free. I don't remember what he said it was, but it feels like yarn.
The last shop I visited was Needle Nook of La Jolla. The shop had many of the same threads as Needlepoint of La Jolla did, but the customer service was seriously lacking. I was in the store for nearly 15 minutes and not once did a clerk acknowledge me. Since I find it hard to leave a store without buying something I bought more Rainbow Gallery thread - Sparkly Rays in pink and orange and a skein of Caron Collection Snow, a metallic thread, in White.
I've been browsing the websites of the various thread companies and am glad to see that each of them has a section on how to best use their threads. I didn't realize how many different threads there are and how to use them properly. I can't wait to have time to play with them!

This weekend Mr. E is coming to visit so I don't know how much stitching time I'll get in.

I am way behind on reading and commenting on blogs and hope to get a little caught up on them soon.

Sweet P