Some New Knitting Goodies & A Happy Reunion

The New Knitting Goodies

John & I took another traipse up to Lexington the other day which included a visit to Barnes & Noble.  John found a couple magazines for himself & I found these   : )

I was delighted to find a new Noro book (new for me) as well as the premier issue of the new Noro magazine!  Do you think I like Noro?  I do   : )   A lot of people find fault with it but I think it's fabulous   : )

I was also excited to find 2 British knitting magazines!  One of the things I like about British craft magazines is that one or more freebies are included when you buy them.  As you can see above, Simply Knitting is giving me 2 freebies ... a Debbie Bliss pattern & a set of stitching markers!  Woo-hoo   : )   The Knitter is giving me a free pattern which is actually kind of lame since the magazine will be chock full of patterns anyway but hey, it's a freebie just the same!  (I didn't say they were all GOOD freebies ... lol!)

The Happy Reunion

During my cross stitching life #2 I was a member of an online cross stitching forum.  I don't remember the name of the forum but during my visits there I became close friends with another member who just happened to live in the UK.  We exchanged cards, gifts, & many, many emails.  Among other things we discussed the British cross stitch magazines & how much we loved them.  I remember wanting to get subscriptions but the freebies were not included for subscribers in America.  Talk about disappointment!  However, my friend said that if I wanted to I could subscribe to the magazines, have them sent to her home, & she would put them aside for me until she had a few months' worth & then she would put them in a package & mail them to me.  She would let me know the cost of postage & I would pay her for that.  I really appreciated her doing this for me.  Then one day our lives suddenly began to get a bit unraveled.  We both had some personal problems & it seemed that I was moving every time the weather changed.  We lost touch around 2004 or 2005.  I have thought of her a lot since then but I had no idea how to find her.

At the end of April Jo from Serendipitous Stitching did a blog post which included a very brief reference to British cross stitch magazines.  I left a comment telling Jo how much I always enjoyed the British mags & how I once had a good friend who used to send them to me & how we had sadly lost touch somewhere along the way.  I said that I hoped my friend was still in England loving cross stitch.  Well, guess who read that post???  Yes!  My old friend!  What's hilarious is that she had been following my blog for quite some time without realizing who I was ... & I was seeing her comments popping up here & there but didn't realize who she was either!  She was able to find my email from my blog.  She contacted me & what a surprise that was!  Neither of us could believe that we had been seeing each other online all this time without realizing it!  My dear old friend is Sharon (Shebafudge).  I am so excited that we have found each other again   : )