My First Retreat

Just got home from my very first stitching retreat. It. Was. Awesome.

It truly felt like Christmas - I stayed up late the first night talking, laughing, and stitching, then got up early the next day, stayed in my jammies, and went running out to the main room to stitch again. It was better than Christmas because it didn't end after one day!! Big shout out to my partners in crime - Caroline and Tracey!!

So much progress - oh my gooses!

The first night I worked like a madwoman and completed page 4 of Drama Queen. That's 6 pages completed now or 32, 582 stitches or 42.2%.

I stitched every day from 8am till 2am - barely stopping for meals. It was a blast! I will admit that my attention wavered a bit, so I changed projects frequently. Luckily I brought quite a few with me. The only one that didn't get any love while I was at the retreat was Elizabeth by Mirabilia. She'll come out to play once I have a few other WIPs finished.

Definitely made some progress on Cirque des Carreaux. I think I've finished about 2.5 pages of the 6.

I finally put a few more stitches into Rules For Life by Kincavel Krosses. I love this piece. I'm hoping to finish it sooner rather than later.

I had a few new starts as well.

I started Ice Blossom by Just Nan and it was a bit of a disaster. Not only was I stitching white on white which is challenging, but I was converting the recommended threads to HDF silk and DMC perles. I did quite a bit of frogging, and I still have more to frog because I stitched one part without the sparkly metallic it needs. *sigh* It looks okay though. I like the textural differences I've added.

I also started Sunflower Bee by HAED for my Dad (he doesn't know about this though). I gridded the first page and put in 100 stitches. It's 88,900 stitches in total, so bigger than Drama Queen, but I'm stitching it on 28 ct white lugana so it should be roughly the same size. No idea when I'll actually get this one done, but the chart is full of big blocks of colour for the first few pages. It should be an easy stitch for now.

I also managed another start/finish!! I worked on the February design in the SotW hardanger SAL from Mabel Figworthy's Fancies. I didn't follow the directions for colours and I changed the beads to French knots (I can just see the beads being ripped off by my nieces within hours of getting it), but I think it looks pretty good. I forgot how time consuming woven bars are to do! It felt neverending. I also found the bead edging stitch to be fairly difficult and quite annoying. I referred to it often as the "stupid stitch." It turned out all right in the end.

Overall, the retreat was amazing. I am dead tired, and yet I feel refreshed, re-energized, and more like a real person than I have in a long time. It was good to take a few days for me without any guilt and with little thought for school and my responsibilities there. I didn't even check email!! (I dread going to check it now though.)

I've already put in my deposit for the October retreat!!