Off I go!!

In a few moments I am off for the annual Knowledge and Needles fall retreat
My car is packed




I have my stitching bag, my Ott light, my collapsible foot stool, my ornament for the exchange, food, and clothes
Have I forgotten anything??
Hope you all have a great weekend!  I am sure I will and I know hubby has a weekend of doing nothing planned.  

Labour of Love

Last weekend I spent the entire weekend on my butt and enjoyed every minute of it!
I went to Kathy's  for the weekend and hung out with some stitching friends including Beatrice, Christin, and Dani

Here are some pics from the weekend

Angie and Fran in the back, Kim in the front

Judie on the left, Kathy our wonderful hostess on the right

Clockwise: Beth, Adriana, and Fran

Counter Clockwise: Judie, Christin, and Beatrice

Speaking of Adriana, here she is stitching up a storm..
can you believe she turned 96 this year!

On Sunday, 8 of us went for dinner at Kathy's favourite restaurant, the Lone Star
As we were finishing up, Dani mentioned sharing a desert.  Since I had never had deep fried ice cream, we just had to do it.

Dani, me, and Christin about to dig in

The aftermath... it was very yummy!

Lots of stitching

August 25th marked my 4th year of going to the Knowledge and Needle Open House.  Check out my other post about this day here.

For this post I wanted to share some pictures of the work that was displayed by fellow stitching friends.

Kathy's Fairy made into a pillow

Lots of finished pieces

More finishes.  Beatrice has her Cirque des carreux and bagatelle,
and Beatrice and Kathy have their Chatelaine's up

Dani has some finishes on the left and Christin on the right

My finishes since last year

Some great stockings

Linen, silk, fruit, and flowers

I'm down to crunch time before my exam... 4 days to go now!
I did take a little break from studying on Saturday though
This year marks the 4th anniversary of me going to the Knowledge and Needles open house. This event is very near and dear to my heart so I was happy not to miss it!
I looked up 4th anniversary on Wikipedia and found the traditional gifts kind of amusing. For the US it is Linen or Silk. For the UK it is fruit and flowers.
I didn't buy linen or silks, but did get some evenweave and got to fondle Christins silk that she got for a birthday present. Since I have been busy, I picked up my potluck contribution from the grocery store, and it included a fruit tray. While there I also gave Ann a bouquet of sunflowers
Sorry if some of you don't find this amusing... My brain is mush these days and filled with auditing terms lol
I did take some pictures of the finished work but I haven't had time to get them off my camera... I will save that for next week. So I will leave you with pics of what I worked on, and what I was "polite" enough to purchase from the shop




Autumn as of last night... Getting closer! I'm expecting a happy dance on the weekend




All the mandalas to date
And now for the purchases :)












Well that is it for today. I am going to relax for a bit and then off to dinner with my hubby to celebrate our anniversary (which is tomorrow)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Soggy dragon

I am currently up in Georgian Bay at a stitching weekend.

It is a very grey and raining day.

This morning I pulled out Blair's dragon to show it some love. With the sun behind the clouds, working on black is a challenge so I have decided to move on to something else

Here is a pic of the dragon to date

Not much stitching, but a little stash

This has been a long week of module review for my course.  Today was a comprehensive review before practice exams start tomorrow.  I did have yesterday (Saturday) off and it was perfect since it coincided with the Knowledge and Needles Nashville open house.  First though I had to head to the Campbellford Legion to play darts with my hubby, my MIL, and another dart friend.  Unfortunately we didn't get to go on.  This did mean I could head to K&N quicker though.

I was greeted by Ann and then followed the laughter to find Christin, Tracey, Dani, and Sharon all stitching away.  I did a quick look at the new goodies and went back my car and grabbed my stitching bag.  I pulled my 4 seasons out, but didn't really get much done.  Beatrice also stopped in and although she didn't bring her stitching, she stayed around and chatted with us.
 
I ended up getting some nice patterns.  I had a crazy headache (stupid PA system at legion was malfunctiing)  and didn't feel like looking through fabric like I wanted to.
Below are the new pattens I got (pics stolen from net)

Ink Circles - Rosetta

Ink Circles - Nut Jobs

Ink Circles - Wild Berries

Ink Circles - Metamorphosis

JBW - French Country Strawberry

After we all settle up with Ann, the 5 of us (Dani, Christin, Beatrice, Tracey, and I) decided to go to the newly opened Lone-star for Dinner.  I guess a ton of other people also had that idea and it was going to be an eighty minute wait.  I DON"T THINK SO!  We decided to do Montana's instead.

After, at Dani's suggestion we split a Mile High mud pie. I had not tried this desert before, and I will have to say it was VERY GOOD.  Don't believe me?  Just look!

Well, back to review!  Other than my WIPocalypse check in this week, I don't think I will be posting until after my exam on Friday.  Have a great week everyone!

En-lightened cottage

On friday night I headed to Nicole's cottage for some stitching R&R.  I arrived around 8pm and set up my area.  My footstool comes in handy again! lol

I decided to work on Cirque des carreux on the weekend.

On saturday, the other girls learned how to make these adorable papers books.  I also showed a few people how to do scissor fobs.

Here a few pics of the girls ddoing the paper crafts

Getting ready to make the paper books

Helen the lovely instructor, Theresa looking on

Nicole doing hers

Helen and Theresa making theirs

This is the one that Helen made for Nicole's birthday.
There are little pocets in the end of each page where you
can stuff little things :)

 Sherry, Suzanne and I just looked on while the others made their books. 

Sherry working on a wedding sampler

I just love Suzannes little stitching case

After pics inside, I decided to take a few  pictures of the beautiful outside.

Looking out from deck at the back of the cottage.

And I'm off

I am home from work, finished packing, and the car is loaded
Now i'm off to Nicole's cottage until Saturday night for some stitching stress relief.

We, in my usual stitchy group, always laugh about how much stuff we need for a weekend away of stitching... well here is the car ready to go, FOR JUST ME, for one night, and one full day

Contents include: clothes, blanket, pillow, food, stitching bag, OTT light, and my foot stool.
Wait until next week when I will be at Fall retreat and there will be 2 people in the car!

a scarecrow, a cat, and two frogs

I forgot to post earlier that I did finish the scarecrow at Rebecca's a few weeks ago!

Scarecrow ~ The cross stitcher magazine

Finished Oct 16, 2011

I did work on the TW the castle that night, but realized that I had messed up at least one colour.  With all the blending I felt it would be easier to frog it and start over :(

So... I spend 1.5 nights frogging and then restarted.



TW The Castle

As at October 23, 2011

This past saturday, I went on a road trip with a 3 stitching friends.  Around 9:30 Anne P., Beatrice, and Kathy picked me up and we went on our way to Quilts and Critters in Millbrook.  They were having they annual sale, and the 3 of them had never been.  First stop in Millbrook was a little shop called Bear Essentials.  It had losts of interesting things including tea pots, jewellery and art just to name a few.  Kathy pointed this little treasure out and I thought I just had to have it!

My new monthly ort container :)

Lets just hope this little guy keeps the nastly frogs away... I have had enough of them lately!!

On our way back from Millbrook we stopped at a wonderful little shop called Herma's.  Lots and lots of very neat things in there as well as well as a ton of Gourment food.  I walked out of there with some garlic oil, steak seasoning, pepper jelly, and some blackcurrent jam.  After lunch at the Buttermilk we headed to a book store to look at there selection of cross stitch magazines and then on to another fabric store in Cobourg called Stitch Witch.  There I noticed the cutest set of scissor and just had to get them

Cat scissors

Speacking of scissors, I got the new ginghers in the mail last week.. I think they are lovely!

Gingher Tessa

Other than boring course stuff, that is about it for now.  See you on Wednesday for TUSAL!

Apple picking 2011

Last year I met with a dear friend Amy and her family to go Apple picking near Cobourg.  I had so much fun, that when she mentioned it this year, I had to say yes.

I did blog about this last year, but wanted to give you a picture of what her 2 adorable children looked like 1 year ago and a pic of them now

Hayden 2010

Hayden 2011

Abby 2010

Abby 2011

Can you believe how big they have gotten?  Especially Abby...too cute!!

And now some more pics of our great trip