More ASG 2008

I left you on Friday after our first class. That evening we decided that we'd just stay at the hotel to eat since there was a nasty nor'easter storm and to be honest, I didn't want to get out in it, no matter how much I was looking forward to eating at the Hilton Head Diner.

Saturday morning we started the day off with Sherri Jones of Patrick's Woods. Sherri apparently doesn't have a website, but you can see quite a few of her lovelies here. Our project was lovely, but then I love most of Sherri's pieces. Here's what it will look like finished...


Then there's the inside...

Here's the fob we were to work on in class, only mine will have a T

Here's what I managed to accomplish...

Now, I realize it doesn't look like much, but that one wave-like stitch took me a bit of time, thank you very much.

Then it was on to a lovely lunch and a trip to the room before we headed to our final class with Rae. Every year I think Rae will not be able to out-do herself. Every year she comes up with something I love even more then the year before. This year she's really gone and done it. I love all things Celtic. And this is the outside of her tri-fold piece...

Stunning is the word I'd use. The inside is equally magnificent...

I did get a little more of this fob done in class then the other. I would have had more done but for some reason I thought the branch wasn't in brown and stitched it in the purple color. Silly me. Of course, I don't have a picture yet. I'd love to finish it first since it's fairly close to being done.

Saturday night has been a costume party, if you want to dress up and make a fool of yourself, for a few years now. This year my DF Jean, who was also my roommate, decided we should go as "pit lizards". For the uninformed a "pit lizard" is a woman who hangs around the NASCAR pits trying to "catch a ride", so to speak. (Yes, you may read heavily into that comment.) So, we put together our costumes, we got all tarted up, as Grant would say, and we headed down to dinner looking like this.

The other occupants in the elevator were probably scared. One asked if we were going as "driver's wives". My response was, "Something like that." Oh, and we'd come up with new names, Candi (Jean) and Brandi (me). Top it off with some killer shoes, that didn't make the pictures, and "cutie, little girl voices" (yes Heather, I promise not to use that voice ever again...unless I resurrect Brandi for another party, then all bets are off.) As crazy as we looked DF's Jill & Heather were adorable, see...

Here's a group picture of those in our group who dressed up.

Sunday morning we had a lovely brunch and then we said our goodbyes. Most of the gang heading to Atlanta, with one then on to Knoxville, while I headed south to home.

Yes, the weekend was a success. Not just because we had 3 wonderful classes, but because we got to hang out with friends and other women who understand our fascination with fiber and linen. Who get, why we would spend a weekend, and a fair amount of money, to sit in classes and get new projects when we have more then enough to keep us going for way too many years to come. Already making plans for next year!

ASG 2008

Every year, for quite a few years, I've been going to ASG in the fall. I started going and didn't know anyone except Rae & Ron who put the entire thing on. Over the years I've made quite a few friends and have had some excellent classes from fantastic teachers. This year was yet another great weekend.

I was very happy that we were back on Hilton Head Island, SC. Although I'm not a "beach person" I love Hilton Head, maybe because of all the trees, even if they do make it terribly hard to find your way to a new resort in the dark. Our hotel/resort was wonderful, both the accommodations and the people who worked there. Kudos to them for making our stay very enjoyable.

Thursday I went to work, bright and early, so I could leave at 3 and head to SC to meet up with DFs Jean, Jill, Heather and Ann. They were driving in from Atlanta, Ann having spent the night at Chez Jean. They made it there before I did and amused themselves with some shopping at the outlets. It took me longer then I thought, probably because the state of GA has most of I-95 torn up and actually had workers out so you had to go 55 and 60 most of the way. By the time I made it, dusk was settling in, ok, it was dark people. Now I had my cute little GPS all cranked and had the address to the Marriott in it, but that really didn't help. I still managed to take a wrong turn. I swear she said to "in the roundabout, take the 1st right", which I did. However, that led to the Hilton. It looked like a lovely hotel, it was just the wrong lovely hotel. Thank goodness I hang with a group of geekylovely women who all own multiple electronic communication devices. Jean, being the "early adopter" among us, has an iPhone and she's who I called first since she was driving and might have the best shot at telling me how to get to the right hotel. She didn't, but the guy at the front desk, where she was thankfully standing, could and I arrived while 2 bellmen were unloading the "Party Van" (tm). Between the 5 of us, we had 2 very full luggage carts. I'm not sure how we managed to fly to Knoxville (I mean) Louisville the last few years. It may be that if we can't bring our entire households, we actually manage to pack only the essentials. Thankfully this year we could all drive. I say this for a number of reasons.

1) Because we could bring lots of fun things. Some knitting, some stitching, some brownies, some alcoholic drinks, my new Mac Book Pro, printer, remote hard drive, wireless router and sundry other items. (Let me take a moment to thank Richard & Jean. Richard is a great guy. He set my new computer up for me and got everything ready to go so I could just start using it. Thanks Richard! And thanks Jean for bringing me all the stuff.)

2) We had great teachers and projects. First we had a great class from Catherine Jordan. First we painted our linen, then we stitched on it. See...
Well, that's kind of what it will look like when I'm done. This is what it looked like when I started.
That's the top on the left and the inside part on the right. I went for the look of some of the beaches in the Bahamas.
Here's with some of my ship stitched in. I need to go back and put another row in the bottom of the ship and finish the sails. I looks much more interesting in person.

The rest of the rundown will have to wait for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

ETA: Changed Knoxville to Louisville, since apparently I was so tired I didn't know what I was typing. Not that Knoxville isn't lovely, it's just not where we've been going the last few years.

Weekend Update part deux

Saturday arrived fairly bright and early. DF Heather and I had decided to skip the huge breakfast downstairs and instead head either to the lovely local java shop across from the hotel, or if they were closed, the Starbucks in the hotel. Unfortunately the local shop was closed. DF Jill joined us and we partook of some nourishment and plenty of caffeine (in my case) to get us ready to tackle Rae Iverson's class.

I am never disappointed by Rae's designs and classes. Sure there are classes that I have taken that I may never finish, or really need a refresher course on, but all in all, I love her designs. This year was exceptional. (For some of us it was more then exceptional...Heather.) Let's just say that when Heather saw the piece she let out a slight scream, or maybe a squeal. You see, the lovely piece has squirrels. Cute, adorable squirrels. Heather loves her some squirrels. Here's some pictures of the main pieces...


The front and back of one piece.


My very blurry picture of the front and back of the cute pin cushion.

Well, there was nothing to do but start on this one in class. It's just adorable. This is what I was able to accomplish while there. I've actually worked on it since then and finished the border you see started and am working on the inside part.


One last look at the cover, you can see all the pieces, including the very cool scissors sheath.

From there we went to Barbara Rokosnik's class (Periwinkle Promises for those who aren't familiar with her name.. She's lovely and the class piece is adorable. The best part of the class was learning a new way to go Queen stitches. I love learning new ways to do stitches, especially when it makes it easier for me. (Plus now I'm stoked about getting the new Ellen Chester purse pattern with all those Queen stitches. This new way of doing them will make it so much easier to I think.) Anyway, Barbara's piece is this cool tin and it's not one of those tins you have to eat candy for (although I personally love that candy and a few of those tins around here just waiting for toppers that I have the patterns for...but that's an entire other posting...). This tin is way, WAY cool. It has holes on the side and you can actually do some stitches on the side. Swanky huh? oh, you want to see pictures....

(Sorry these are smaller, but this is getting to be such a long post. You can click on them and see a larger rendition.) The picture on the right shows you what I managed to accomplish over the weekend. I'm not keen on the bubble-gum pink color she used with the kit, so I'm doing a bit of rearranging color-wise with the kit. I'm going to add in another silk that I think will work as the outer most border of Queen stitches. Yes, those are Queen stitches, eventually there will be 3 rows of them total in the border. Haven't decided what overdyed to use yet. Still looking through my stash and if I don't have something I like I'll have to go shopping for something. I also purchased the companion kits for the tin, a scissors fob and needlebook. Well, I purchased the scissors fob at ASG, thought I'd gotten the needlebook, but apparently I forgot to pick it up. Thankfully Barbara is very nice and has rectified that little problem, probably before I manage to get this posted.

That's it for the classes. Saturday night some people dressed up for dinner. Others of us just wore crazy shirts.
Yeah, that's almost all of the "Stitch Queens". These are my dearest stitching friends...and regular friends too, funny how that has worked out. From left to right: Judy, Jean, Ann, Jill, myself, and lastly (The Magic That Is) Heather. The original group can be seen over on TMTIH's blog in a picture from a few years ago when we originally formed to do a round robin. From there we've grown a bit. But these are my buds, both in stitching and in life.

Sunday morning was fun. Not only was the now obligatory slide show present, but there was also a surprise 40th Wedding Anniversary for Ron & Rae Iverson, who put the whole thing on. It was a great surprise and a wonder the group who did all the work for it was able to pull it off without being found out.

So, that's it. I arrived home safe and sound Monday evening and have been catching up ever since.

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.

Decisions, decision

Sometimes it's fun to make decisions. I need to make a fun decision, what stitching to take with me to ASG tomorrow. I only want to take 1 item. I thought an ornament, but I don't want to take something that I have to start. Too much trouble. I narrowed it down to 3 items: 1)part 1 of Leporello book and yes, I'm still on part 1 which is crazy since the whole thing ended in March of this year and it started last year some time. I like to start things you know; 2) Halloween Fairy & 3) the class piece from Catherine Theron from last year's ASG. My DH Heather said I should bring Leporello, but as of right now it's not in my carry-on. What did make it was Halloween Fairy and "B is for Bunny" (which wasn't one of the original choices which tells you about my decision making abilities lately). I do have Leporello Book fixed so it doesn't take up much room, so I may stick it down in my bag. Crazy things have been known to happen.

Otherwise, I'm packed and ready to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning will come way too early, I have to leave my house at 5:30 A.M. - no that's not a typo, that's the real time and if you know me you know that I don't usually see that time of day. I'm gonna need a nap tomorrow...or lots of coffee.