Stitching Retreat

What a great day at Ann's annual stitching retreat! We left in the morning, anticipating getting there early and getting a good seat, only to find about 8-9 cars already there! But with Ann's new stitching room, there are lots of great seats and fantastic lighting provided by the sky lights. Lunch of course was amazing as always, as everything always brings such delicious food and its too tempting to try a little bit of everything. The dessert table was so enticing....with so much goodies and cakes, but with diabetes now, I resisted and only ate a small piece of carrot nut bread and fruit only.

It was so great to see and catch up with stitching friends that I hadn't seen for a couple of years and I was looking forwards to finally meeting my new blogging friends. Its so funny to meet people face to face that I feel I know already through their blogs!

I did get a few pictures, although not enough I realize now, as I must have taken them later in the afternoon and I have too many shadows from the skylights. Believe me, the lighting was much better in the room than what shows up in the pictures!


Here is Christin (Christin's Ramblings) and Beatrice (Stitching with a View) showing off their partially completed TW's Castles.



Just outside is a peek at Rebecca (Rebel in Ontario), and inside are Beth on the left and Kathy (Kathy's Sit and Stitch) sitting next to Ann's amazing Prairie Schooler quilt on the wall.



A not very clear picture of Kathy at the end of the table in the stitching room, with several of the ladies in Ann's Thursday afternoon stitching group.



Colleen and Marj mostly kept to the much quieter dining room with Carmen and Paula for most of the day. I didn't get a picture of several of the people who were there, including our lovely hostess, Ann (Knowledge and Needles), or Dani (Dani...Black Belt Stitching Wizard), who was always visiting at different areas of stitching groups, nor did I get a chance to meet everyone! There were over 20 people there - what an amazing group!

Of course I did pay a visit to Ann's shop, Knowledge and Needles, conveniently located next to the house, and with Anita's (ahem) encouragement only managed to fall off my stash diet a little. I did want to pick up some 25 ct fabric so I could try some over-one stitching with my super-fantastic new Dazor magnifier at hand, so I found two fat-quarters in cream and antique white. Ann had some of the new JBW patterns, these are just so sweet and too hard to resist these cute little patterns. I found a Prairie Schooler Christmas Ark pattern, that I thought I could adapt into a birth sampler, as I just found out I am about to become a great-auntie again. And 3 of us, Anita, Marg and I bought the last of Ann's Spring Fever biscornu kits. Not such a bad stash haul and actually it was only $2 over my stash budget that I had saved up, so no guilt on my part! I can climb back up on the wagon again....at least until my birthday :-D