Long time, no see

I have been so busy since Wednesday. My SO is back from the beach. Had to put aside the stocking so he wouldn't see it. He thinks I spent all week on my sheep. Ha ha! I showed it to him, and he said, "Those are taking a long time, aren't they?" Yep. Now to just get them finished and get that stocking finished so it's ready for the fair.

I have been thinking a lot about something my LNS put out in their newsletter. I don't know if I should just take it as a thought or think of it as bitchy. They were talking about how we should really focus our purchasing efforts on going to the LNS and not shopping online. They had a valid argument, I guess . . . because they do do mail order and they have the super-saver card, and you can touch things there, but still . . . I like shopping online. I like shopping on E-bay. I usually don't buy fabric online, cause that's a hit and miss thing (ex: the three yards of heather material that turned out to be grey, What will I do with 3 yards of grey material?). But I like the convenience of shopping online. I like the fact that, usually, if you buy from an ONS, it's in stock, ready to go. My LNS has to order it and they want the entire payment upfront. My ONS only charges when they have it there. I know that's a little thing, but still, what if it's something that is going to take a while to get or you might not get, but they still got your money tied up for a while?

Then there's the costs involved with actually getting over there. My LNS is 1 gallon of fuel away from me. That's 3.75 to get over, and the same to get back. How often does the cost to ship an order come to $7.50? Yesterday, I was driving back to SO's house from Baltimore, and I got lost because the expressway exit didn't indicate his town, and I get unsure of myself. So I ended up getting off headed to Pimlico Racetrack, where, by the way, they were having the Preakness Stakes, and I had a HELL of a time getting back to the highway. I finally pulled a U-ey in front of about 6 Baltimore (and that's Ballimer for y'all not from here), because I just didn't care if I got a ticket. If I got pulled over, I planned on throwing myself on their mercy and explaining that I was from DC (that mollifies the issue a lot of times, they know we don't know how to drive in their city), but they let me go. I guess on Preakness Day, they have worse things to worry about than a frazzled-looking red head pulling a U-ey. And you want to know what anal-retentive me was MOSTLY concerned about? The amount of gas I was burning up being lost! Anyway, so it matters. Not to mention, it's a time issue. I work two jobs. This is the first time in, crud, 2 months I got to my LNS. My weekends are so precious to me that when I find something that gets something I need done and it doesn't involve driving somewhere on a weekend, I am ALL ABOUT THAT. With an ONS, I can order at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, on Christmas Day, on Sunday at 5 PM. I like that freedom.

I guess I don't like being told where to shop, even gently. I mean, if you start down the road of that logic, it turns into you can only shop at one LNS, and I frequent three. I did frequent more, but they closed. And when you think about it, as a stitcher, what is the first thing you look for when going on vacation? Is there an LNS? Now I will say, in all my travels, when I get to a shop, they all go out of their way to be helpful. They all say, let us know if there is ANYTHING we can get for you. That is lovely. If I were looking for city-specific designs, I would check with them. But at least it doesn't get shoved that I should patronize them.

I mean, I love my LNS. I am way over-reacting probably. But then again, so are they. Everytime I go in that place, there are people all over the store. It's a big LNS. I do my part to support them. So much so, that they know my name. If my mom doesn't come along, they ask about her. When I was going through my stash, a lot of it had stickers from there. So I've done my part. I fought terrorism by shopping there, I stimulated the economy by buying yesterday, can I spend my money in peace online? I hope so, cause I just found some sites in Europe, and, um, their designs are WAAYYYY cuter than ours, and they take Paypal . . .