Lights and Darks, new store and camels....

Yesterday I had the pleasure of having a guest for the day.  In fact, she spent the night, is doing so again tonight then heading home tomorrow.  Mary Davis, a dear friend from Indian Acres came up to catch up on things, meet Winston and do a little fabric shopping for the Outer Banks trip.

Mary works in the guard gate at Indian Acres, so she headed up here right after finished her graveyard shift, arriving at 8:15 AM.  We had coffee and breakfast cookies before putting Winston in his crate and heading towards Route 340 and the "Lancaster" quilt shops.

First stop, Log Cabin Quilts.  It has been remodeled and expanded and this was the first time I had been in it since they completed the project.  It was very nice, but I thought they might have been expanding the shop to increase the number of fabrics that they carry, but instead, the expanded area was really more tourist stuff.... completed place mats, quillows, pot holders, table toppers, small quilts, Amish Cookbooks, etc.  I can understand why they did it as they are in the middle of Amish tourist country, but I would have preferred more fabric.  We each found some things to buy (big surprise).

Next stop was The Quilt Shack.  It has a wide range of different fabric as well as a nice bargain room.  It also provided us with things to buy.  While Mary was in the basement shop (which sells notions) I called a friend from church about a shop that sells beautiful fabric for less.  She gave me the name (Cedar Lane Dry Goods) on Orlan Road (204) outside of New Holland and I punched it into the GPS and in a little over 15 minutes, we arrived at a nifty shop located in an industrial mall that I never would have even known was there.

We traveled some back roads from Bird-In-Hand to New Holland.  I could have never gotten there without the GPS.  As we wove our way past many lovely Amish farms, we came to a place where there was a pickup truck stopped on the road, looking at a horse with a young colt.  Not unusual i this area... tourists stop and gawk at cows and pigs and Amish children.  But shortly after the pickup truck Mary pointed and exclaimed... "Isn't that a camel?"  I tried to stay on the road and look at the same time, slowing down as we continued on our route, but sure enough, there was a camel, keeping cool under a tree.  And on closer inspection, there was another one farther off in the field.  Camels... in Amish Country.  Who would have guessed?

Back to Cedar Lane... It was an interesting shop.  There were socks, underwear, buttons, thread and zippers.... books, cards, stationary and various sundries.  Then there was fabric.  Several large rows of fabric.  Quilting fabric (most of it it the $6.50 per yard, Mary found a fabric that she had paid $11.50 a yard for in a 'quilt shop') and a very nice variety of themes and colors.  Regular fabric, batiks, polar fleece, pre-quilted, flannel, and flatfold fabrics at $2.79 per yard.  They even sold hand made quit tops.  Not quilts, but already sewn together pieced quilt tops that one could buy, choose a backing, batting and binding and finish on their own.  The first time I have ever seen that.  And yes, we found more stuff to buy.  I am now well set for projects for the OBX trip.

It was a fun day followed by naps and a lovely meal while watching quilt videos on YouTube before crashing for a good nights sleep.