Back from the stitching retreat

Friday, at 5:15 a.m., I got myself up and hied myself off to Austin to meet up with Mary, Lynn, and Jennifer at Mary's house. Mary drove us all to Bandera to the Purple Sage Ranch where we spent the weekend at a stitching retreat.

The accommodations were high class, the food was gourmet level, and the stitching time and camaraderie was wonderful.

I started and finished a small freebie project. It is stitched on Monaco with NPI silks. This will be used when I demonstrate making a scrapbook page with small stitched pieces at the IH35 Stitchtogether in November.

I bought some stash from the sales table that Stitches From the Heart - an LNS from San Antonio - had in our stitching room and also picked up a few treasures from the orphan pattern table.

One of the gifts we received was a pillow from Linda of Pillow Talk. She makes pillows for stitched pieces. We were given one, and then I ended up buying three more. Linda displays them in albums with recommended stitched pieces for the fabric. She doesn't have a website yet, but is working on it. She currently sells her pillows through Stitches From the Heart in San Antonio. They were VERY reasonably priced - less than ten dollars a pillow! They are eight-inches square with a 4 3/8" opening.

DH made some floss sticks for me to donate to the live auction we had on Saturday night. Here he is spraying them with lacquer. He rigged up a floss stick spraying station on the front porch. He made two long floss sticks and then two that folded.

We met a lot of new friends and talked with folks we met at the last stitching retreat. We are planning to go to the next one in March.

DH says he really missed me while I was gone, and so did the dog! I really missed them, too, but I had a great time and am looking forward to the next retreat in March.