Weekend Report

And what a weekend it was! I think everyone had a fantastic time. I know everyone I hang with did. Sometimes you go to things like this and you like one of the projects, sometimes a couple, but this weekend I liked all three! This ranks right up there as one of my all time favorite ASG's.

I started things off with a bit of fun. My DF Jean and I had arranged it so I'd be on the same plane as her, DF Jill & DF Heather. However, we hadn't told Jill or Heather. I almost got found out Wednesday night. DF Jill called and I was waiting in the truck for mom to pick up our dinner at the local Chinese take-out. She hadn't asked about my flight for this year at all, but she did then. I think she assumed I'd arrive before them and would be meeting them at the hotel. I told her I had to be up at "0-dark 30", I thought we had to leave around 5:30 or so. Which was the truth. We were leaving that early to be able to have a good breakfast before I got on the plane and mom & dad headed up I-95 towards West Virginia. We had planned to have breakfast at Cracker Barrel which is in my top 5 for places to get a good breakfast, hence the entirely too early wake-up call. When I landed in Atlanta Jean helped me figure out where they were by way of cell phone calls. (How did we plan surprises before cell phones? I mean really. You'd have to plan way ahead and that's just not possible with this crowd.) They ended up at "On the Border" in the concourse we were headed out of for some lunch and I surprised them there. It was a lot of fun to see the look on Heather's face especially, she was flabber-gasted.

Finally we arrived in Louisville and at our hotel, the Seelbach (which is nice but is old and there are issues with old hotels...like ghosts and small rooms and small bathrooms, and bugs in beds - but we won't discuss that because it just freaks me out. Luckily the bug wasn't in my bed.) We met our DF Judy at the airport and other DF Ann arrived later after driving from her new home near Knoxville. (BTW Ann hasn't updated her blog in awhile, but she's been very busy and hasn't had a lot of time to blog, much less the ability what with the move.)

It is our custom to go to dinner at Lynn's Paradise Cafe on Thursday evening. We love the food and the fun atmosphere. This year we found out we also love the staff. In case you didn't know, Louisville had some tornado and tornado-like weather that evening. Which meant we found ourselves in the basement not long after we arrived. The staff was AMAZING and took care of us by feeding everyone snacks off the line and bringing us some cokes and lemonade...although I didn't see that until we were leaving to go back upstairs. For pictures and a more indepth coverage check out DF Jill's post about the experience.

Friday the festivities began with a lovely lunch/tea. This year we could not only wear our favorite hat, but also bring any well behaved dolls or teddy bears. I decided this year to wear the hat that I finally finished and got felted before I left last week.That's Heather and I with our bears. We were the only one at our table with bears.

After lunch/tea we had our first class of the weekend. Our group started with Eileen Bennet of The Sampler House. I have always wanted to take a class from Eileen, but never had the chance, so this was a real treat in my book. (That's Eileen in class. I'm sure she's describing how to do a stitch...yeah, I'm sure that's what was being discussed....)

Eileen designed a lovely band sampler in wonderful autumn colors.Not a great picture, but it's called "Little Green Acorn Band Sampler". I actually got quite a bit worked on the top band, both in class and during the weekend as you can see below.
The fabric isn't that green/yellow, but you can see what' I've done so far. Eileen was an excellent teacher. She also did the lecture Friday night after dinner. She talked about Catherine of Aragon, but mainly about the people around her, like family and of course Henry and some of his other wives. Very interesting history. That of course led me to have to purchase Catherine's Sampler. I also bought a few other things from Eileen's portion of the boutique... Accomplishments and History in Miniature. There were plenty of others I loved, but settled for those three.

Friday night most of the gang gathered in one hotel room, mine & Jean's I think, to stitch and talk and drink some Cosmopolitans...yeah, alcohol was consumed by some of us. Believe me, Heather and I needed it the most. That night we started doing the finishing work on the infamous "cubie".

So, there's the info on the first two days....more tomorrow.