Conveniently Isolated

There are many times when I wish we lived in a bigger city, or town really for that matter. When shopping for any food ingredient that strays from the straight and narrow, though the stores are getting better bit by slow and painful bit. Trying to book a flight to anywhere without having to take many puddle jumpers to cities you are not interested in and paying through the nose for them. Waking up on a sunday morning and wanting to go to a museum, it's just not an option here. Night life, live music. Not that I ever go out, but I can't help that think if we had good music I would make more of an effort. And then there are days like today. This afternoon fellow fabric lover, Rachel and I headed out to a store outside of town that is run by a former Amish woman. Rumor is she left (!!!) the Amish but is still pretty Plain. The store is primarily a fabric store with an emphasis on quilting and clothing fabric. It is amazing. The have so much to choose from and it is all beautifully arranged by color. The women who run it yell to each other is true PA Dutch, and as anyone who is familiar with PA Dutch, yelling is really the only way to speak it. When you over hear there conversation in English there is so much attention to color and balance in quilt making, you understand why their quilts are so coveted. The best part though is all the stuff they sell in addition to fabric. This is truly a woman's store. The tops of all the shelves are full of toys for children. There are wooden puzzles, tractors (lots of tractors) play food, baby dolls, bottles, the list goes on. The notions, oh the notions, every kind of elastic you can imagine, though no FOE sadly. They have mason jars of buttons screwed to pieces of wood hanging above the check-out counter. The have diapers, handkerchiefs, fantastic socks, underwear, gloves and a fine selection of Mennonite and Amish men's hats. The fabric is cheap and wonderful, though being as they service the Mennonite, the polyester section is quite impressive! The place is amazing, I am quite certain that everything you could ever want for a sewing project is there. Did I mention the spools and spools of bias tape hanging from the ceiling or the bins of embroidery floss? Rachel and I each made out with a nice little start to some more projects. I even scored some material with Formula 1 race cars that I am going to make pillow cases for Otto with. No surprise, he loves it. On our way out the store there was a wonderful sign that "Do you want to speak to the man in charge or the women who know what is going on?" It was wonderful

So despite not having fancy museums or being able to jet off at a moments notice, there are some pretty amazing things about living here that you wouldn't have access to anywhere else.