I got sunshine, on a cloudy day!

I don't know how long it's been since Ikea opened a store only 40 minutes from my house, but it's been quite a while.  Until yesterday, I still hadn't gone.  I was afraid I wasn't strong enough.  I was terrified of Ikea.  Because I knew I'd want everything there.  And, as you may know, I'm not so great in the self-control department sometimes.  However, yesterday I steeled myself and drove down.  And I didn't do that bad!  I came out with a couple bright red trash cans for my sewing room ($1.99!!), a plant stand that I plan to spray paint red (because I like to spray paint things red!), some great little juice glasses, some kitchen towels, a fun apron, and 3 cuts of fabric (I'll admit - that might have been my biggest reason for wanting to go!)  It's surprisingly heavy nice stuff for the price - $5.99  - $8.99/yd!  I decided that one piece needed to be a new curtain for my dining room.  

Note the adorable little pincushion wrist-y made from wool felt by my friend Catherine!  I was afraid that it would make the room dark because it was such a heavy fabric, but quite the contrary:
It's like a self-illuminating curtain!  Faaaanastic!  I love it.

I also got a couple yards of this:
It's thinner, and honestly I kind of want to make a pinafore-ish dress with it.  Not a frilly thing, but sort of a dress layering piece - sort of like a tunic is sometimes a layering piece for another shirt.  I don't know how to explain it, and honestly it'll probably just sit in my fabric stash for 5 years until I decide to use it for something entirely different!

I also got a few yards of this:

Don't know what I'll do with it, but it sure is fun!  I think it might be a wall hanging to cover an odd plumbing access door.  I'll probably make a big wooden frame and stretch the fabric around the edges like a canvas.  Yeah, I conquered Ikea and had fun at the same time!  Oh, I also got some lingonberry jam - mmmm!

Today, because it's President's day and I didn't have to work, I ran over to the Corner Cupboard - an odd little thrift shop plunked in the middle of a neighborhood (I suppose that shouldn't seem odd - in old neighborhoods like mine, that was the way business often were - a little grocery on the corner, a barbershop in the middle of other houses.  Very mixed use.  We're just so used to strip malls now, I guess, that such things seem weird.)  Anyway, it's very tiny, but there was a whole section with cuts of fabric (lots of stretch polyester!) bins of old zippers, ribbon, craft supplies, etc.  There were a couple bags of yarn, but most were acrylics.  I did find a bag, however, with a big mess of grey fingering weight wool (no ball band - just a "mess" of it, which I realized was still in hanks after I took it out of the bag and twisted it up, and also found one ball that someone had already wound up), one skein of tan-ish vintage Bernat fingering weight, and one unlabeled skein of green mystery stuff (which, after I took it out of the bag, appeared to have either been randomly snipped up, or had been attacked by moths, though I wasn't sure it really felt like wool.  Either way, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble/risk, and threw it out.)  Get this - all that for 69 cents!  

I'm not super crazy about either color, but they're both light enough that they could be easily overdyed.  The hanks of grey wool are a little coarse and shetland-ish so I think they'll be great for some colorwork - maybe a pair of Selbuvotter gloves or something!  I'm pretty jazzed!