The crepe myrtle bushes/trees are flowering now and showing off all the colors in our area. 🙂 The red ones have been catching my eye but they come in a wide variety of pink, white, red and purple. Showy and long-flowering … eye catching.

I woke up today to a phone call from my buddy Patty, asking if I’d like to go out to a quilt shop with her. Uh, YES, would love to. 🙂 The weather today was glorious – low 80s in temperature, sunny with fluffy white clouds (my daughter calls them ‘spilt milk clouds’) and soft breezes. After dressing and eating lunch we were off to Westminster, MD to visit Sew & Sweep quilt shop (Patty’s birthday was last week Wednesday and she had a coupon to spend:).

The drive was nice with fairly low traffic and lots of lush greenery to brighten our way. The shop is in a poorly visited shopping mall and is rather spacious. Nice folks all around working there, too. Of course, we got our MidAtlantic Shop Hop passports stamped, too. They were giving a 15% discount to ‘hoppers.’

The shop had a nice quilt exhibit hanging throughout – my favorite quilt of the lot was this one:

I do have a fondness for insects of various kinds – I don’t know whether we could find anything more alien on another planet than those six-legged critters. 🙂

After we finished, and did a drive-thru for some COLD drinks, Patty decided to take us past another shop on our way home – we stopped by Domesticity in Towson, MD for a visit, too. Pleasant walk around petting fabric and I found a rainbow of Eleganza perle cottons by Wonderfil to buy for my embroidery thread stash. 🙂 I’ll be back again this coming Friday with my friend Barbara (fingers crossed) to pet more fabric.

Oh, I almost forgot, they had a wonderful DRAGON print fabric (red dragons, pink background swirls) and I bought two yards of it – wonderful! Can’t wait to decide what to make with it. 🙂

On the whole, lovely scenery, lovely shopping, great day out!

🙂 Linda

PS I got a new book I had pre-ordered this week to add to my library:

I own the first volume of her stitch books and this one is another eye-candy filled treat with great stitch diagrams. Eager to try some on another sampler cloth!