When we get to the retreat room, there is another bag of goodies for us. So nice. It is in another Vera Bradley reusable shopping bag. We get several Vera things: a nail file, a key ring coin purse, Vera decorated clips and a couple of greeting cards that are quite funny.
I'm excited as today is going to be a cross stitching day. We get the Halloween design chart and we get a set of six different charts to share around the table.
Now Halloween is not my favorite holiday. I like pretty pastel colors and sweet flowers rather than orange and black and grotesque ugly monsters. My birthday is a week before Halloween and I get tired of all the hoopla for Halloween. My favorite aspect of Halloween is the candy. But I think I can make this project into a bag for Claire when she is old enough to go trick-or-treating.
We meet Vicki Hastings and she talks about how her company came about and evolved. I'm kind of dense and don't know the background of all this, but I get the impression that Prairie Schooler is an offshoot of Cross-Eyed Cricket Collection. I've stitched many of the Cricket designs. It was nice to know the background to some of the charts, like "A Walk in the Woods" was designed with her daughter in mind. Vicki Hastings is an artist and draws on graph paper.
Our first job in this class is to sort out the threads. This is no easy task. Especially if one color is missing and you have to guess which color is which. BFF and I end up going over to The Silver Needle at lunch to check and see if we have labeled the threads correctly. That's where I figure out which color I am missing and which ones are mislabeled. Also, I spend my 15 dollars of Classy cash. I decide to get another pair of my favorite scissors, tiny Bohin ones.
Lunch is sandwiches and we have many choices of meat and cheeses and breads.
After lunch we start to stitch and then the lights are turned off so we can see Vicki's slides as she gives a talk. I wish that I could have stitched while she talked but whatever.
At three o'clock is an ice cream break. I love it! They did this yesterday too. Wouldn't it be nice if everyday at 3 someone came around to give you a little ice cream treat?
We trade in some of the charts we got for ones we want more. I get a chart for a mitten with a gerbil on it. Cute! Then Vicki hands out another free chart. Wow, I love getting free stuff.
Then it is time to trade buttons with the other tables and pick up our cooked buttons. Some people have to leave early. Retreat is nearly over. We have quite a wait for the shuttle. We wait in the air-conditioned coolness of the shop. It is always dangerous to wait in there as I keep seeing more stuff I want to buy. The shuttle comes by but can only take a few of us. It's okay, I'll wait for the shuttle to return to get us. I have time enough to buy one last chart.
Nine of us stitching ladies decide to have dinner at the hotel restaurant. We have a grand time talking and we have a fun nice waiter, Hamid. As we are talking, six of us get phone calls at just about the same time. Uh-oh. We find out that our plane tomorrow has been delayed from 7:15 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Some of us have been rerouted. I end up having to get up at 4 a.m. and taking a taxi to the airport and getting on a different plane than my BFF. I get home earlier than expected.
I had a great time at the retreat. I got lots of fun stuff. The retreat was run very well and I can cross The Silver Needle off my bucket list of great places to go. I met some really nice people that we are trying to talk into meeting us at Spring Fling next year. It was fun to see my BFF again. I'm am so lucky to get to go to retreats.
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