On the first day in St. Petersburg, Russia my husband arranged for our tour guide “Luba”, to take us to a fabric store. I can’t write the name of the store, as the Russian alphabet is a combination of Greek and Latin letters. It almost seems as if the people that designed the alphabet had dyslexia, as the letters appear upside down, backwards, lower case, and capital letters, all scrambled together. But that would not have stopped their creativity, of dealing with such harsh weather, and very short winter days, as the sites in St. Petersburg are spectacular. There were very few cotton fabrics in the shop and about half of them were Russian (about 10). They were manufactured in a town outside of Moscow, where local rumor has it, that men should go there to find a woman, as that is where there are plenty of them. Luba told me that even though there seemed to be so few fabrics, it is much more than they used to have. So the market for it seems to be growing. Perhaps the warmer than usual weather is creating a higher demand for cotton. There has been an extreme heat wave in Russia this summer. It has been fatal for some, as there is no air conditioning (as it is rarely needed). Here are photos of the 2 Russian fabrics that would be great for a kaleidoscope design. One has symmetrical designs, and the other is a paisley print that would be great as a background blend.