Wrapping up the weekend's goodies

I was feeling a bit better toward the evening, so I did a bit of sewing. I am making a birthday present for Wanda so I will show it once she receives it. Meanwhile ... here is the final chapter of the retreat weekend. I was gifted this punch and stick-on pieces as a table gift. The lady had given us an instruction sheet too.

When you get Week's Dye Works floss, the tags look like this.

It is hard to put them on a binder ring with having only the hole the floss is threaded on. Here is floss on a binder ring. Classic Color comes with a tag with two holes.

With the punch, you put a hole in the opposite side from the name of the color

Move the thread to the new hole

then stick on one of the plastic holder loops.

Now it can be hung on a binder ring

Some people hand out floss cards or business card with holes and without holes.

That punch can put holes in the cards so they can be hung from a binder ring.

I was gifted this little box with a tomato pincushion and a cross stitched tomato covering the bottom. So cute!

I didn't buy too much. Of course I bought those bolts of fabric and I did buy two corner gauges - one for me and one for my sister. The shop hasn't had these in quite a while.

I bought this chart and a few skeins of floss. The chart was a new release. They had a model of it stitched and it was so pretty I just had to have it.

Speaking of that fabric, the three bolts were Windam and the piece was makower uk.

I still had leftover scissor pouches even after going around the room several times handing more out and giving them to people who bought thread beds. They did like it if I could find a pouch that matched the thread bed.

I did get a little stitching done. I finished this little sampler

and I got everything above the skein of floss stitched on this Animal Cracker by Stacy Nash.

This is what it will look like when it is done

My table is a disaster again! LOL!! I need to put away all the stuff from the retreat so I can get back to work.

This morning's sunrise

Xmas cactus and retreat goodies

After seeing Wanda's post with here Xmas cactus, I needed to go look at mine to see if it had blossomed and it did!

So here are some of the goodies I brought home from the retreat. I will show the last of it tomorrow. I was so tired when I got home from work yesterday that all I could do was take pictures of my goodies and then do nothing. I am still tired. One more good night's sleep and I will be ok. I do love all the different things people come up with for table gifts. Most people bring a few extra just in case. I received these cute pincushions.

Some candy

These are a mix of dangles to add to a zipper pull and holders for floss.

I received this cute jar with goodies inside. The goodies were trims and things for finishing smalls. There was a lot in that little jar!

I got some skeins of floss, a tiny pair of scissors and some do-dads. The bag has weathered jingle bells in it which I will use for finishing a small.  Everyone needs a little from with sunglasses!  That little glass piece in the first picture is an emergency needle that you can hang on a necklace!  LOL!!

One lady had brought these beautifully decorated cookies her daughter made that looked like a tomato pincushion! It is too pretty to eat, but some ladies did eat their cookie and said they were delicious.

Since there were four designers, we received four kits - meaning, the charts, floss and fabric! This kit is to make a scissor holder and fob, a tiny pin cushion, and a tiny needlebook. I took a picture of the pin cushion beside a tea bag tag so you could see how tiny it is. It has a bee theme. Everything fits into the tin. The designer assured us that the instructions were so anyone could stitch and finish each item.   This kit is going to my sister since she likes bees and is good at stitching fussy little items. Merry Christmas Kathy!

The next sampler came in lovely box. It is a reproduction.

The third project was another reproduction sampler. It has lots of different animals on it and there are a lot of colors! Look at all that floss!

The last project was another reproduction, but a completely different style. It is a German sampler and they gave us a skein of silk floss! I have never stitched with silk so stitching this one ought to be interesting! The person that owned the original sampler gave it to the designer so we passed it around to get a good look at it.

The shop also has quilting fabric. They have some beautiful fabric, but it is all $12.99 a yard - yikes! I don't really need any fabric, but I had to look at the 70% off bin. I found these three bolts and each one had a bit more than 8 yards on them. I thought they would be perfect for some baby quilts.  You had to buy the whole bolt but after doing the math the fabric was only $3.88 a yard! It had been marked $12.99.  I forgot to look to see what brand it was.  I will let you know tomorrow.  

There was a room of marked down fabric I missed so I went back on Saturday and found this darker fabric that I thought would be a nice accent color. It from a different line, but I think it works. It was 40% off and I bought 3 yards.

Back from my cross stitch retreat

I had a wonderful 3 1/2 days in the Fingerlake area of NY for a cross stitch retreat at Hobby House Landings needlework shop. I stayed up the hill at the retreat site. I reconnected with some stitches I had met at other retreats and met many wonderful new friends! There were four designers and they are showing the projects they designed for us. They wre all lovely ladies, spent time talking to anyone and everyone for the full three days, and thanked me for the gift of a project bag, thread bed and scissor pouch I gave them. The one designer who is probably 80 brought her cousin, Maggie. She was older and was just learing to cross stich at the retreat! I had a leftover table gift set, so I gave that to her. She was thrilled! Tomorrow I will show each project up close. Read on for what happened when I got home.

Here are some of my fellow table stitchers hard at work.

There was plenty of tables set up and counting me there were 6 at our table so that left me with two extra table gift which one went to Maggie. I had plenty of space to set out my project bags and thread beds. I started with 100 PBs and came home with 68. There were only 83 stitchers; at the previous retreat there were 150+. I started with 183 thread beds and came home with 116. I received a lot of wonderful comments on the quality of the TBs and PBs. I guess I am already ahead for the next retreat! I was happy with the number I sold. It was funny that I would leave to go do something and when I came back I would find money! The ladies would shop and just leave the cash!

I ended up with lots of goodies,

but I didn't have time to take pictures last evening. When I got home, I emptied the car and threw the clothes in the wash. I was just getting ready to start putting things away when my neighbor stopped over. He needed a 9 volt batter and a screw driver. The keypad to open his garage would not work so he though the battery was dead. He had been outside power washing and had closed the garage door. Well, about 5 minutes later he came back and changing the battery didn't work. He was locked out of his house, didn't have his phone as it was in the house, and didn't have the car keys so he could get the remote control garage door opener out of his LOCKED!!! car. Geeze! So he came inside - he didn't want too because he was wet and dirty from power washing -and we called AAA. Yes, we told a little white lie and pretended it was my car, but other than breaking a window, he was stuck. So he sat on my steps watching for the AAA guy and I went down to the lower level to try and get unpacked. This all happened while I was talking to my sister who had called to wish me a happy b-day. When my neighbor came over I had to hang up with her to take care of him. All I wanted to do was to sit and relax after a 3 1/2 hour drive and look at my goodies. AAA finally showed up, got his car unlocked, and he got his garage door opened. It was 6 PM before I could call my sister back. By then I was starting to crash. I did take pictures of this cute case we got. It is not a Winterberry, but it is beautifully made. They had a bunch of colors to pick from. One of the ladies offered to add my initials for my b-day gift! She was making scissor fobs or bag fobs.  That was so sweet of her!

I did make a trip to the mall to get something. I think a person could spend all day in this mall. It is the biggest one I have ever been in! Here are two branches and you cannot see the end of either corridor!  This is only a fifth of the mall!