Retreat + Gift Exchange = Stash Influx! (Retreat pics included)

I recently met with my stitchy friend and the two of us had lunch and a day of shopping before we both headed over to the Nashville Stitching 2016 Retreat.  

So. Much. Fun.  On both accounts ~ our day out and the retreat.  My stitchy friend and I love to shop for each other and decided to do a stitching and book related gift exchange. When we met for lunch on our day out, this is what she gave me in our exchange.

She stitched this awesome Harry Potter themed pillow for me.  I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, so this was so perfect.

This beautiful A Stitch In Time themed coffee mug.  Love it!  I've got a few of these patterns as HAED QS's.  :0)

Patterns.  Love!

Beautiful necklace.  :0)

Matching set with scissor fob, needleminder, and frogger.

This Harry Potter themed bag from SewMuch2Luv.  Eeepp!!

Gorgeous zippered bag and qsnap cover set with Victorian ladies.

And since we're both avid readers, this copy of The Great Journey by David McCullough as well as The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan.

There was also a travel thermos and candies.  All of this was also contained in another lovely green chevron printed tote bag.  

Exchanges with friends.  It's such a fun thing to do.  But ~ she had one really big surprise left for me!  This was completely, 100% unexpected.  :0)  She had asked her husband if he could make a stitching stand for her, made from pvc pipes.  He did and she had him make me one too!  What an *amazing* surprise!

After lunch we went to Parnassus Books where I picked up this lovely stitching themed edition of Little Women.  I've wanted this one for a while and was so glad to see that they had it.

We eventually made it to the retreat.  It was so much fun.  All of our old stitching buddies were there and there were several new people as well.  So much fun to make new stitching friends.  

There were lots of door prizes and give aways at the retreat.  Leslie from Under the Sea fabrics gave all of us one of these pretty mermaid scissor fobs.

I purchased two froggers from Nicole (The Cole Collection.)  I just love them.

Barbara who owns TrulyN2Stitching was the hostess and had lots of qsnap covers, zippered bags, project rolls and other items for sale.  I purchased three qsnap covers from her.

We were given several free patterns and this is one of them.

Here are some more retreat pics ~ merchandise tables, finishes, etc.

Sunday morning upon leaving the retreat my friend and I went to Shoney's for a good breakfast before saying our goodbyes.

So I actually have a stitching induced injury

Honestly.

Leave it to me.

I've known for a long while now that I find stitching in hand painful.  I know that some people can stitch in hand just fine but others, like myself, find it very taxing and painful to the hand holding the fabric.  

My orange/black accessory set that I showed in my last post - I had been stitching that in hand because I didn't have a hoop or snap small enough to work well.  So I figured ~ what the heck, I'll just stitch in hand.  It might hurt but no big deal, right?

Wrong.

That was last Wednesday night.  I noticed all day long on Thursday that I was having quite a bit of pain in my left wrist.  It felt like an injury induced pain, not simply soreness.  I kept wondering what in the world caused it?  I knew I would have remembered if my wrist had taken a hit or if something heavy had been dropped on it - because truly, that is how it felt.  The outside of my wrist was even quite swollen. Then it finally dawned on me - I had spent about an hour stitching in hand.

I knew I had to allow it to rest.  That trying to forge ahead like it was nothing would make it worse.  I could barely lift anything with that hand, even opening the front door was painful.  So rest I did.  I didn't stitch at all on Thursday or Friday.  Saturday I carefully did just a tiny bit of stitching on my Christmas in the Kitchen and my plastic canvas owls.  And here I am on Sunday night, still some soreness in the wrist, but thankfully not nearly as much.  I'm still babying it though because I don't want to make it worse.  One hour of stitching in hand has equaled days of pain and needing to be careful.

All from stitching in hand!  Let me just say ~ never again.  It's not worth hurting myself and compromising my ability to stitch.  So my black/orange piece is put away until I get a tiny hoop for it.  I'm going to order one from 123 at the end of this week.  So hopefully by the end of next week, it will have arrived and I'll be able to resume work on it.  I might also think about getting one of those wrist supports to use while stitching.  It's amazing how when your wrist is out of commission...it effects almost everything you do!

So this is me ~ still healing and taking it slow until things are back to normal...

Progress on WIPs and a New Start

I've got a lot to share, so I'm going to jump right in.

You may remember the spinning box I had started working in on this post.

I got another one of the outside panels done.  Only one more of those to go and then I'll move on to working on the inside.

In that same post, you'll see my last update on Christmas in the Kitchen.  

Here we are now:

I spent one evening working on my Fall owl plastic canvas piece.  There is something about plastic canvas work that is so relaxing to me.  When I started that night, the owl only had eyeballs and ears.

I started the Wee Beastie series.  This one is so fun and has lots of sparkle, but it is detailed work.  I can't work on this one if I'm tired or rushed.

But the thing that I'm very excited about is *finally* getting to start this set that I previously told you about.

I don't have all the fabric I'll need for it, but enough to get a good start.  I have everything else - all the beads, threads, etc.  I found the perfect pair of scissors to go with the scissor fob.

This is my start.  The camera really washed the color out on this picture.  It's vibrant like in the pic above.

So that's where I'm at, at the moment.  I'll need to get back to my HAED soon, but I'll probably spend some more time on this accessory set first.  I've been looking forward to this set for so long!  It's so excited to see it finally coming together.

When Stitchers Travel

I have a stitchy friend that I meet with a few times per year.  Nashville is a good meet up point between us, so we go there, rent a hotel for a night and spend the day before and morning after stitching, shopping at the LNS, eating out, and sometimes going to an event. It's always so much fun and we leave rejuvenated and happy.

This past weekend we met and we were both looking forward to it so much.  I had a bit of trouble getting our hotel reservation as it was to be the same night as the country music awards and Bonaroo was also happening.  So Nashville was filled to the gills and all the rooms were charged at about 3X their normal rate.  Wow.  But, we managed to find one Extended Stay America in a bedroom community that was still charging it's normal rate.  We got one of the very last rooms.  I don't think there was a vacancy anywhere near Nashville that night.

We also had to brave the traffic and crowds of downtown proper.  We had tickets to go to the Ryman for an author talk - Steven King!  He's making the rounds right now for his new book End of Watch, which is the third in the Bill Hodges series.  Everyone got a copy of the book with their ticket price.  400 of them were signed, but neither one of us got one of those.  Phooey.

(my son's dog...she likes to pose for the camera)

Mr. King was very entertaining and spoke for about an hour and 15 minutes.  He told stories of his life, his writing process, and took a few questions.  He had a very calm and laid back demeanor and was quite a bit more soft spoken than I was expecting.  It was really fun and he kept us laughing.  I'm really glad we got to go.

Of course another high point was shopping at he LNS.  The last time I was there some months ago, I had seen this My Big Toe as a model.  I think it's a pattern that can't really be appreciated until you see it stitched up.  I haven't been able to get it off of my mind since seeing it, so I went ahead and bought it as well as the needed threads.  

As you can see, a few more things crept into my basket.  I needed another Qsnap and liked this small rectangular size.  And I had planned on getting a couple of Mill Hill kits.  I've never done one, and was getting the itch.  I got two nice, summer ones.  Lemonade and Root Beer Float.  The brown fabric and orange/green floss was the only spur of the moment purchase.  It's Barnwood by Picture This Plus.  It's an odd rectangular shape, but I really loved it so I snatched it up.  I might use the threads to do some pumpkins on it?  Or given the shape of the fabric maybe a welcome sign?  Not sure yet.

Saturday night after shopping and attending the event and dealing with the huge crowds downtown ~ we were just done for by the time we got back to our room.  It was so nice where we were staying though, because it was **so quiet**.   There weren't any other hotels in the area, it was more a business district.  So all was calm and no noise and it was so nice to get back to that room and just crash.  We took it easy the next morning, staying right up until time to check out.

If you have a stitchy friend you can meet up with a few times a year (or more!), just for the sake of visiting and stitching, I would really recommend it. It's so fun and so nice to just get away for a little bit with someone else who loves to stitch.  Comparing projects, seeing each other's progress since the last time you met, a little shopping and eating out ~ it's really a lot of fun.

Stitchers who bake ~ Promised recipes

In my last post, I left some teasers about some yummy baking going on in my kitchen.  

So if you would like to have the recipe for this cake:

Go here.

If you would like the recipe for this strawberry bread:

Go here.

And because I'm kinda proud that it won a blue ribbon from the test kitchen very soon after being posted, if you would like the recipe for these Butterbeer Cookies:

Go here.

The strawberry cake recipe is very old and was my mom's.  The bread I've been baking since I was 9.  And the Butterbeer Cookies is a recipe I created myself just a few weeks ago.

Enjoy!