A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to tour eight of the greatest cross stitch shops! These shops are all in the Twin Cities area. Where might the "Twin Cities" be, you ask? (I realize that not all my readers live in Minnesota USA!) "Twin Cities" refers to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in Minnesota. Several of the shops have websites, so even if you don't live nearby, you may enjoy visiting them online!
This year was the second annual Follow Your Heart tour, but it was my first experience with it. It was held over three days, October 15th, 16th, and 17th. The name "Follow Your Heart" comes from the fact that you can draw a heart shape if you plot all the shops on a local map.
All of the shops were featuring many door prizes and each shop had one piece to a winter-themed sampler chart. After visiting each shop, you were entered into a grand prize drawing. Although I came away with lots of great cross stitch stash, I didn't win the the grand prize!
I had a great time visiting each shop and can't even begin to say which was my favorite - I loved them all! Of course, I may be a little biased towards the shops (three of them!) where I won a door prize. It seemed to be my lucky weekend.
I started out Friday evening for the two "southern" shops. The first stop was the Creative Hand Shoppe in Eagan. Then I headed for Zandy's in Burnsville (where I won my first door prize - a floral needlework kit). Since these two shops are closest to my home, I'm sure I'll be visiting often.
The next morning I started out early with a friend. Visiting cross stitch shops is a lot of fun, but much more so when you can share it with a friend. Also, she happened to know where we were going, so she navigated while I drove. Thanks, Sally!
We began by heading into Minneapolis to visit Our Friends Count and Ingebretsen's Scandinavian Gifts & Foods. On the map, these are the two shops in the center of the heart. From there, we headed northwest to Frames & Stitches in Brooklyn Park and 
finished our Saturday shopping at Stitchville USA in Minnetonka (the western-most shop on the map). At Stitchville, we briefly met Ruth Sparrow of Twisted Threads. Ruth designed one piece of the beautiful winter-themed sampler that we were collecting. I can't wait to stitch it!
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