Not The Day I'd Planned

Yesterday I'd had quite a day planned.  My friend Sue K. was talking about Terry Pratchett and how much she admired him.  I've never read any of his books and thought I might give him a shot.  He wrote 40 books set in his discworld and just figuring out a good place to start reading is cause for debate.  How could I have missed out on this phenomena for so long.  So I was headed to a couple of used book stores and a few quilt shops that I'd found on the Row By Row site.

First stop was Gatsby's Used Book Store, a nice shop and I asked the young man for the Fantasy/Sci-Fi section.  He pointed it out and went to move a cart that was in the way, I backed up and ended up stepping on his foot.  Mortification!!!!!!!  I apologized profusely and he was very gracious about the whole thing.  They didn't have any of Terry Pratchett's more than 40 books which was very disappointing but there are a few more used book stores in the area to check out.  I apologized to the clerk one more time on the way out.

Then I headed over to the first quilt shop on my list, Tranquility Quilts in Cypress.  Closed!!!!!!  It had been on the Row by Row Experience map but apparently it had moved recently to Buena Park and according to their website they were closed on Tuesday so that was a complete bust.  I found out later in the day that apparently they were now closed entirely.  I had been to the shop previously and it was a nice little shop.  Nothing special but nice.  It struck me as odd the last time I was there because there was another shop just down the road a couple of miles and a large discount fabric shop within a mile that carries a huge selection of quilting cotton.  I wondered how two quilt shops could thrive in such a small area.

Next stop was The Quilting Cupboard just down the same road a few miles in Garden Grove.  NOOOO!!!! This one had moved too, to Placentia which was like 20 miles away.  Two strikes.  ARRRRRGGG.  I used the GPS to find other quilt shops in the area and came up with Bear Quilts which was also in Garden Grove.  I had been there a few years ago, it didn't have a ton of stuff but I was getting desperate so off I went.  I parked and headed into the shop which had no sign.  It took just one look in the door to figure out it wasn't a shop anymore,  They were now only doing long arm work.  With my head hanging down, I headed to the car and was probably headed home since this was strike 3.  Three shops not one open.  How did this happen!!!!!  As I was pulling out a gentleman came out from the shop and gave me a list of shops in the area.  Obviously I wasn't the first to come calling.

There was one shop, Soft Expressions on the list that was fairly close by in Anaheim.  What the hell, I'd give it another try.  I was forewarned that it had very little fabric but tons of notions which was fine with me since I'm not really in the market for fabric right now.  I think Soft Expressions is primarily an internet shopping site but they do have a small show room with almost every notion imaginable.  They had a bunch of books which were 40% off and I scored a couple of those.

There were 30 or 40 bolts of fabric on deep deep discount.  Rulers, stabilizer, and needles were abundant.  I scored some acrylic inks which I'd been hoping to get since I'd seen them on Quilting Arts.

There were some scrapbooking supplies as well and the prices were all a bit lower than I'd seen in other shops.  Not sure I would hurry back unless there were some specific things I needed but it was worth the stop.










Now I was within about 7 miles of The Quilting Cupboard's new shop so I decided to get in the car and drive some more.  It was worth it.


The shop was very bright and sunny with some lovely patterns and samples.

They had a nice selection of batik, a few patterns I hadn't seen elsewhere, and a really cute witch pattern that they had made up in several ways.

I bought this pattern to make my own pop-up trash can.  I do have to say I was less than impressed by their Row by Row design but then you can't have everything and the price was right.


After I was done, I got a pizza at the place next door which was very yummy.  It had Alfredo sauce and mushrooms and onions.  Then I hurried to get on the road so I could beat traffic.  This is definitely not Kimberling City traffic.   So what started out as a pretty bad start ended up an okay day.  How can I complain when I got to visit a new quilt shop?