Stragglers

And here are the last few stragglers from the retreat. The kit in the lower left is the retreat sampler. I also won another prize (the Celtic Lads) and bought another two projects (yeah keep laughing). ;-)

I also finished one of the punchneedle buttons from the Artful Offerings class on Sunday. This is my first punchneedle experience. It was fun to play with the project a little. I'm happy with my little start button!

Today in crafts, I'm prepping the magnetic numbers for my car. I started stock car solo racing last year and am planning to go out 5-6 times this year in competition, so I'll need my car numbers and team mascot :-). I'm also assembling a project that I finished on Friday. I'm hoping I'll be getting to that soon, but I can only do 10 things at once!

Stitching Retreat Wrap Up

It's been a busy few days since the stitching retreat. It's been a strange time over the past year where it seems that almost every minute of my life has been filled with some commitment. I'm hoping that I will be able to relieve that trend. *fingers crossed*

I had a wonderful time, as always, at the retreat. I received some lovely gift items:

Also, I got plenty of stash in the goody bags handed out:

I also won a few items in the games we played:

And then there's the stuff I purchased (as if I needed more):

I even did a little stitching while I was playing with all the new shiny stuff. I was able to finish the three projects from the round robin class on Saturday afternoon early on Sunday:

I've been sorting and filing all of the stash I received from the weekend. Most of the charts are logged on my patterns and kits inventory blogs. I also put all of the fibers into their appropriate locations. I mostly prepped up a couple of kits for two of the charts that I'm really looking forward to stitching (ooof I have a big pile of even those). Yesterday morning the last of the accessories were put in my stitching spot. I still have a few photos to take of the last of the items I received on Sunday and of course... the unfinished projects are on my plate. Now if I can just tell everyone to go away for a while I might be able to get some of this stuff done!!! *grin*

Fun Was Had

Today was the big day at the stitching retreat. Gifts were received, classes were taken, purchases were made and great conversation occurred. I have photos of all of the stuff I received/purchased so far, but it's rather late to format and load them. I'm planning on getting most of them up tomorrow along with the finishes I whomped out. Time to hit the bed so I can be ready to stitch tomorrow!

Found it :-)

I found a photo of my name tag for this year's retreat in my backups!

Stitching Retreat Introduction Day

Today was the first day of the stitching retreat. There are a lot of people this year. I think more than either last year or the year before. The theme is Reflections of Americana. Jan and the retreat committee are shaking things up a bit. We're going to wait to vote on peoples' name tag designs until tomorrow. I was planning to post mine tonight, but I discovered after I got home that the photo I took in January was lost in the horrid death of my memory stick, so I'll have to remember to get a photo of it tomorrow and post it then. The name tags being displayed were rather impressive!!

We did a little meet and greet game where we had to tell 2 true things and 1 false thing about ourselves. Some of them were really tough and the true facts were astonishing. I had the following for mine (which were moderately interesting):

1. I have 2 girl cats with boy names
2. I went to Germany in 5th grade
3. I'm missing a bone in my foot

Well, I'll just leave you to ponder that. We met the designers for the classes and got to scope their trunk shows. Cheesecake was served (yum) and great, silly conversations occurred.

We had a little mini class tonight. I made good progress on the Garden Sampler project they handed out - photos to follow on that too. I also was able, between last night and tonight, to completely finish the A/B page in my sampler book project and get the C/D finishing stitching started. So I was feeling pretty great about all that.

Tomorrow we'll be doing a class in the morning, lunch, a round robin after lunch, some free stitching/shopping and some evening fun activities. I'm looking forward to being there and should get to bed soon. However, I should share my most recent finish... the E in my Sampler Book project:

Quick Finish

I wrapped up a quick project Saturday afternoon while I was being driven around in the car. I'm thinking that a chauffeur is a critical component of a fine stitching addiction.

This project is one of the pieces I won at last year's stitching retreat. I figured, since the other one is coming up very soon, that I should whomp through a couple of the remaining little projects from the last one so I can make space for the new ones that will be coming in ;-).

I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do with this one. I'm sure a nifty finish will occur to me at some point.

In the mean time, I have made excellent progress on the E is for Elephant/English Stitch in my Sampler Book series. I'm expecting to wrap that one up tomorrow. At that point I'll be starting into the F is for Fox/Four-Sided Stitch. I doubt I'll be able to get too far on that one before the retreat on Friday.

I was hoping to wrap up the E tonight, but instead I nicked the vein in one of my dogs claws and dealt with a kitchen full of blood and a 100lb baby. He's doing just fine now, even though he thought he was going to bleed out. I swear!! Now I'm just trying to get up the motivation to hit the sack. The time change is messing with me!

D is for Done!

I finally finished the next letter in my sampler book series. I wrapped it up at the March stitch in at A Stitcher's Garden. I'm hoping to spend the day working on prepping the next couple of pages for stitching. But, then again, maybe not - lol!