Market Trip Part III

Sunday Morning found us up early and at Lorraine's for breakfast. While we were waiting to be seated we struck up a conversation with 2 ladies who were also there for Market. They had arrived at the restaurant before us and when the hostess came to seat them they invited us to share a table. Lynda and Shannon are from Conway Arkansas and the name of their shop is The Stitcher's Garden. Look them up if you are ever in their neighborhood. I'm sure they will welcome you warmly! It was wonderful to talk with other shop owners/employees and pick their brains. Being so new we have a lot to learn and both ladies were very generous with their advice and ideas. If there was one thing about Market that I was personally disappointed in, it was that there wasn't to my knowledge anyway, a gathering room for owners/employees. I would have loved to talk to more people and even sit in the evening and stitch for a while with them. What a wonderful resource that would have been!

After finishing breakfast we headed over to the Embassy Suites so we could go back to places we had visited the day before but hadn't made a final decision on. I would have gone back to every room if it had been up to me but I'm not the money person and one of us had to be practical! One big decision we arrived at was to gamble a bit and buy the Sullivans display cabinet.


We realize that converting long time stitchers over to Sullivans from DMC is going to be difficult if not impossible but I saw many designers in that room and spoke with quite a few that are switching over to Sullivans. The price point is awesome, the colors are beautiful and it doesn't knot as much as DMC. The DMC number is right on every skein of Sullivans which makes conversions a snap too! Can you substitute Sullivans for DMC in the middle of a project? No. But if you are starting a project, don't have a stash of DMC and your LNS carries Sullivans, give it try. I don't think you will be disappointed. We had fun getting the display in the jeep but we did it and here is how it looks in the shop:


I went back to the Needle Delights and Nancy's Needle rooms. I've wanted to try my hand at counted canvas work for some time now and we are considering bringing it into the shop. Before we do that I think we should have a working knowledge of how to do it. So I bought these beauties to try:


We wrapped up our shopping and took a break for a late lunch. We couldn't leave for home until the Sullivan people were done with the display so we just hung out and chatted with some other ladies who were waiting for the 2:00 drawing. We didn't win the drawing unfortunately. After the drawing, people cleared out pretty quickly. The weather reports for those going home were not good in almost any direction you were going so I think people were anxious to hit the road. We loaded up the cabinet and made a quick stop at Walgreens to get Mary Ann some sunglasses. When I got back in the jeep and tried to put my seat belt on it wouldn't budge. We tried everything we could and it wouldn't move. I was not going on the interstate headed into bad weather with no seat belt so we were forced to call the rental company and get assistance. They sent us to a place where we were told they wouldn't get the parts to fix the problem until the next day but the guy was able to tell us how to unjam it in the meantime and we finally hit the road about 5:00p.m. After clearing Nashville traffic we popped in a book on tape and headed for home. The weather was pretty crappy with lots of rain but luckily no ice. We finally stopped at midnight in Columbia Missouri which was a good thing as the next day we drove by tons of cars in the ditch along the interstate. It must have turned to a solid sheet of ice shortly after Columbia pretty much all the way to Mound City. Tired and weary we made it home by about 2:00 on Monday. It was a great adventure and a wonderful learning experience and I can't wait to go again!!

Going off on a tangent here for a minute: Have any of you seen the ads for Jared's jewelry store? We don't have one in our neck of the woods but we get the commercials on TV all the time. Dan is always saying he went to Jareds to get this gift for me or that gift for me and I always roll my eyes and say yeah, sure hon. For Christmas this past year, Dan bought me a beautiful ring. Then he made up this fake Jared's tag to fit in the ring box so when I opened it, I would think he actually went there to get my ring. Well sweetie, if you read this, I REALLY went to Jareds, now you have to sweat it out to see what I bought there!! MWAW!! Love Ya!


Tuesday we hit the floor running! Lots to do in such a short time to get the shop ready for the stitcher's on Saturday. All the new stuff needed some place to go so I brought in my little hutch that was from the Stuart house. It worked out pretty good if you can ignore all the vacuums which you can in person but in this picture look terrible!

here I have photoshopped the vacs out so you can see it better:The rest of the new items went on the other display pieces.....


this is the back half of the shop.

and this is the front.

It's all still a work in progress but looks much better than it did 3 short months ago. I got everything all displayed by 3 on Friday, just in time for Last Saturday Stitching! What a week that was! This week we are re-ordering what sold on Saturday, I have 4 cross stitches to stretch and a bunch of other framing jobs so I'll be pretty busy next week too. Busy is good!!

That pretty much ends our first Market Adventure. I hope you enjoyed the journey! Thanks for stopping in, comments are always welcome and appreciated! See ya all next time!