Now for you guys (and I am trying not to be sexist here) this particular shopping center in Scottsdale might not hold the same fascination for you as it did for my sister and I. You might be interested in the Auto Museum (some pretty cool cars out from and some even more interesting ones seen by peering through the windows or the Sporting Goods store.

What drew us was completely different. Go figure, but this particular location has a JoAnn’s Fabric, a Hobby Lobby and a Michaels. If you don’t recognize any of the names just smile and keep reading. For those who live in the US and do any kind of crafts this is like finding Mecca without flying for a day and being packed like a sardine in a crowd of identically dressed people.

Once upon a time, JoAnn’s was simply a fabric store; a good store than sold decent quality fabrics, lots of notions and patterns and usually offered classes (hello? grow new customers). It is now officially Fabrics and Crafts complete with on-line coupons, mail order and tons of beads, papers, and stuff. Perhaps this is what it needed to do to survive since I also seem to remember Minnesota Fabrics and Hanncock’s Fabrics back when I lived in the US both of which I believe have gone out of business.

Then there is Hobby Lobby which, as I remembered it, is more home decor and crafting stuff. Finally there is Michaels which states that it is arts and crafts. All three have yarn – pretty much the same – Caron, Lion’s Brand plus bunches of cheap scratchy acrylics. The supply of needles varies  from the neat swirly plastic that has horrible cables to the bright, cheerful color coded aluminum double points that seemed to please everyone on my last cruise.

These are places you can spend hours.

Ok – these are stores in which I can spend hours just wandering around and looking. Even given all of that, I spent almost nothing picking up one pattern along the way, a couple of dangles, and no yarn. Imagine that – no yarn!