IKEA...wow

Mary wonders what I thought of IKEA.

I thought it was great! And I managed to get out of there only spending $13 (plus my lunch cost.)

I wanted to look at dining room chairs since ours are mostly broken. Funny how you can have furniture for 8 years and it remains fairly intact until your children are old enough to start abusing it and then it falls to pieces. We've had an oak dining room set that we bought in 1990. 3 of the 4 chairs are now broken and the fourth has gotten mighty wobbley. We've tightened all that can be tightened. Time to get some new chairs.

And at IKEA you can find some fairly decent ones starting at only $20 a piece. They aren't really big, but they would be better than folding chairs, which is what we're using now. So I went to *look* at them. In fact, the friend who went with me drives a Mustang, so I asked if she minded driving since we wouldn't be able to buy anything big at IKEA since her car is so dinky! I just wanted to *look*, then I planned on coming home, consulting the catalog again and making a list to come back with.

I found a couch I really liked...again, I *looked* at it. Not bought, looked. And I *looked* at a lot of stuff. It was quite overwhelming, but not as bad as I feared. It would be easy to get lost in there, but they do provide maps and since I don't have that chromosone that prevents my asking for directions, I didn't.

We had lunch at the little restaurant in there and it was quite delicious (roast beef & potato salad.) In the end I walked out with some kiddy cups, little bowls to match, and a jar of lingonberries for my friend, Mary, who had asked me to pick some up. Like I said, I *looked*.

Why all this emphasis on *looking*? Well, I got home and talked to Dan about what I had found. Immediately, he assumed that a) I was itching to buy everything I liked immediately and that b) I had not really properly considered the kind of chair we should buy. He got online and proceeded to show me all kinds of ridiculously overpriced chairs that were no better than the ones I had *looked* at at IKEA for a lot less money. Grrr...

He is always telling me we should wait to buy anything nice until the kids have moved out. So this was my solution: cheap chairs from IKEA that will last long enough to get our kids out of the house. And if they break, they are only $20 to $40 to replace! And IKEA stuff DOES last a long time; I have a friend who has been furnishing her house from IKEA for years and she has 6 kids and the stuff has held up!

Now he tells me we should buy something nice that will last. I'm sorry...my neck is sore from being whipped back and forth watching that tennis ball...and they say women can't make up their minds...

I definitely am going back out there and I will go for the cinnamon roll next time, Mary!

On the knitting front, I have worked a bit at the Celtic Cabled sock...I'm gonna have to suck it up and reprint the Jaywalker pattern, since I still can't find it.