Sunday, August 05, 2012

Shop Hopping

Two friends and I signed up to do a two-day quilt shops bus tour during the Minnesota Shop Hop; this took place on Friday and Saturday.


I was curious about these bus tours. They go around a specific section of the state and visit all the shops in that section. It saves me from driving too many miles, and I get to see some shops I had never visited before.

Nice idea. I don't think I'll ever do it again.

On Day One we visited six shops. All but one I had been to before. We had to be on the bus for a 7:30 AM departure, and we returned back to our starting point at 8:00 PM. Can you say Long Day??

Day Two was similar, but I had never seen 4 out of the 5 shops we went to, so the novelty of these shops was fun.

a tiny shop in a tiny town; I had never heard of this shop before. It is nice but is only 900 square feet - barely room for half of the 44 bus riders. They are in the process of expanding, so in the future they'll be able to accommodate a crowd.

The problem with this bus tour idea is over-dosing on quilt shops and on spending. I know, I was not required to buy anything at all. However, they gave us a $10 gift card to each shop, so I wanted to at least get my free $10 worth of stuff. Sneaky, eh? It gets us in there looking around, then we get sucked in by the pretties and buy a little more. I really didn't do TOO badly. I only spent a small wad in one shop; the others I tried to stick to my "ten dollars free" limit or slightly above.

By the end of the two days I didn't want to see another quilt shop or think about shopping again for a long, long time. Too much!

Now it is Sunday morning, I got a good night's sleep, and I have all that beautiful, new fabric waiting for my attention. I'm going to go play in my sewing room! The fun begins!

4 comments:

Andi said...

I try to buy someone everywhere on shop hops also, so I make a list of notions. If I've hit the limit on fabric, I pick up some needles, neutral thread or batting, which I can always put to use. Did they have any cool demos?

Cathy said...

Wow! That is a whole lot of shopping. Fun though! Tiring, yes!

Terri said...

We have a shop hop yearly here. There is a bus, but that just means you shop at their pace. (It does save gas though!) I took the bus once, and like you said - I won't be doing that again.
I did spend waaaay too much money, but that was a few years ago, and I'm reaping the benefits now. I can shop in my stash now, and not pay the high prices they are asking now.
Hugs

Karen O said...

I have done buses twice for the MN Shop Hop. The first year was great. Last year I did one day and I think we went to 8 shops. I didn't have money to spend, so did ok with that, but it was exhausting to go to so many. TOO MUCH eye candy. Besides the fact they didn't go in a logical order for such a long day. The fabric is gorgeous this year, isn't it? Or at least I think so!