The Retreat Begins

So finally, it is Friday afternoon, 4 p.m.  Deb (who owns Stitchville) introduces Cynthia Zittel of The Drawn Thread.  We are all so excited.  Cynthia hasn't taught in a while and we are so lucky that she decided to teach at Spring Fling.

Deb is wearing red on the far left.  Cynthia is up front showing the project.
Then the Friday evening project is handed out.  This is a special moment for me.  I love when the project is revealed, given out and I am handed a complete kit.

Cynthia's packaging if fabulous.  Inside are two pockets and there are holes that will hold thread.  How clever!

The project is a scissors fob done in Swedish weaving.  Cynthia is a true artist.  It has texture, color, design.  We get right to work.  I'm so excited.  I have to calm down to stitch.
We see the project and are delighted.  It is gorgeous.  We are working on lavender linen.
I make lots of mistakes and have to go back and correct them.  But I don't care, this is fun.  The time flies.
We stop for dinner.  The hotel has the best food ever.  It is served buffet style.  The desserts are so good and are tiny.  So I take about six.  The diet went out the window.
We go back after dinner and work on the fob.  Many people have brought their Drawn Thread projects to display on table in the back of the room and it is fun to see them up close and done.  It is great to talk to friends from last year.  I meet Marilyn who has brought her Mermaid Treasures.  Oh my is it beautiful.  It was Marilyn who found mistakes in the chart and suggested a different way of weaving the edges.  I knew of her so it was nice to meet her in person.  There are some fabulous stitchers here.  One of the fabulous ones is Chris who brought some projects also.

Her stitching is amazing.  Instead of putting twisted cording on the edge of the scissors fob, she put beads.  So I wanted to do that too.  My beads weren't looking as even as hers.  But she told me how she did it, so I fixed mine and I love it.  Here is mine all finished.

I am totally exhausted by the time the evening is over.  What a fun day!  

Tomorrow is the big project!

A