Beads and buttons and books, oh my

I haven't done much creatively in the past few days. Not sleeping well at night, too tired to stitch. I make a point, however, of going into the studio and either looking at books, sorting beads and ribbon and keeping in touch with my stuff.

Today I had to go downtown for work. I rarely go downtown in the winter unless absolutely necessary, partly because I had my fill of winter-time public transit or rather standing at bus stops in 20 below temperatures during the eight years I took night classes at U of T (Toronto) to get my BA. Also, when you're bundled up for the 20 below and then go into a heated store, then out again to the cold, back into the heat -- you sweat, then freeze. And with menopause upon me, who needs the added hot-cold routine?

So after I finished with work, I headed out to Queen Street West, one of the new hip areas of Toronto. I wasn't looking for hip, just the bead store, button store, ribbon store and fabric stores. I started in the bead store and bought about twelve different colours and sizes/shapes, mostly in purples, mauves and pinks. I went into the button store to breath in inspiration and they do have lovely stuff but I'm trying to use what I have and find cheaper sources for buttons (i.e. garage sales, thrift stores). The ribbon store I went into was more along the lines of sewing ribbons for lining clothes type stuff. There is a fantastic ribbon store, Mokuba, on Queen Street somewhere but they've moved since the last time I was there and the hot/cold was starting to irk me and I was really only looking for silk ribbon for silk ribbon embroidery so I passed and headed back to the burbs. But on the way, I stopped off at the library, took out "Little Earthquakes" by Jennifer Weiner, the "new" Work of Our Hands and an embroidery stitch book -- the authors' names escape me at the moment and I'm too lazy to go look at the books right now.

While I was standing at the streetcar stop, I had a thought how to use the beads on some of my embroidered already seams so tomorrow morning, I shall hopefully be more in a creative mode.

Did I mention that I am making a cq square for the Crazy Quilt Benevolent Society? The squares are then made into quilts for breast cancer research/awareness fundraising and/or scholarships for the cq society classes.

Anywho, off to watch Sex and the City and Coronation Street.