I'm home!

So we made it home yesterday! I was so ready to go home, let me tell you. 31 days in the company of my mother just about does my head in and I'm sure it's the same for her. I know we could never live together LOL.

So where should I start? Maybe I should just give you a report on the SB retreat and leave it at that.

I arrived at the Grand Summit around lunch time on the Thursday. There were a lot of SB ladies around and quite a few had to wait for their rooms as check in is not until 5pm. Luckily, our room was ready so up we went. Gosh...the rooms at the GS are fabulous! We got one with a parlor this time and it's just great to have so much room to sit around and also a kitchen to make lunch/dinner and save some $$$ for stitching supplies!

I went on down to do the welcome project which was a scrapbooked memory book. This is right up my alley as I'm into scrapbooking at the moment. We were supplied with paper, glue and lots of bits and pieces & we could do whatever we liked with it. Mine is currently unfinished and will eventually have pages for each class and the banquet.

Thursday evening was the Shared Stitches event. We were also given a charm bracelet with one drop on it. In every class after that, we were given another 2 charms to put on our bracelets. You could also buy the charms from the other classes. It's just gorgeous!

My first class on Friday morning was with Charland. Her piece is a heart shaped box which opens up to hold all your supplies. It's stitched in wonderful shades of pink! The front has various motifs on it with an ABC also. I intend to change the B into an F as those are my initials. Charland was wonderful and I really enjoyed her class.

Friday afternoon was free and I spent it relaxing in our room. Oh I also purchased a coupla things in the retreat boutique! Friday evening was the Ackworth lecture with Jacqueline Holdsworth. She is wonderful and her lecture was really interesting (even for me, when Quaker isn't my most favourite thing!). We also had dessert that night which was a choccy pot filled with choc mousse, topped with a strawberry. Yum! We got another charm for our bracelet and as I'm from overseas, mine is an American penny! All the US ladies got British pennies.

Day 2 (Saturday) brought two classes. The morning one was Shepherd's Bush. The retreat piece is called Finch Song and is just gorgeous. It has lots of purple and a really lovely vine border. The pudgie is quite skinny though! It's stitched on 32ct French Vanilla linen using AVAS, Gloriana and Silk 'n' Colours threads. Tina & Teri were fabulous as usual and signed our charts for us. I had also brought along my JCS SB ornament wallhanging for show & tell and CathyUT suggested that I get the girls to sign it. So I did, and they did! All I need to do now is sign it myself and put a little story on the back.

But I digress....Saturday afternoon's class was with Barb & Alma of Blackbird Designs. The piece is a box which is lined, painted, sanded and waxed with a cross-stitch piece mounted on top. There is also a pincushion filled with walnut shells which, unfortunately, I couldn't bring home (the walnuts, not the pincushion!) due to quarantine considerations. Anyway we spent the afternoon painting, sanding and waxing the box and it was fun fun fun! The cross stitch is done on 30ct Iced Capuccino using Crescent Colours threads.

So...onto the banquet night. I sat with the now-famous Crandall sisters and Dawn, Dee and Janet plus my mother and DD. The entertainment was us...each table was supposed to do a 2 minute piece. Well, let's just say that our table crapped out! We did nothing but the other ladies were very entertaining.