Embroidery- The Language of Art, Day Two

I'm so excited for the conference to start.  I had a good night's sleep and I am ready to go.  No time for walking.  When I looked at Facebook this morning it said that one year ago today I was in Edinburgh. I think that is a good omen.

 My first hurdle is to drive out to Winterthur.  Matilda got me there.  I love the long drive into the museum.  It is just the most beautiful place.

 No wonder DuPont built his house there.  Having been to Winterthur before, I knew where to park and where the lobby is.  I'm just a bit early so registration hasn't started yet.  I'm looking for people I know.  After you go to a few retreats, you get to know the regulars.  I see my friend Dorothy and Claudia and Mary Lynn.  Registration opens and we get a folder with our schedule and various hand-outs in it along with a name tag.  There are pastries and coffee available.
We find out that the lecture hall is through the gift shop.

The screen is very nice and large.  I can see everything very well.  The sound was good too.  I had no trouble hearing the speakers.  The conference is set up for four or five lectures in the morning and two workshops in the afternoon.  The first speaker was Tricia Wilson Nguyen.  I enjoyed her talk very much.  The speakers were allotted 45 minutes to speak.  The other three speakers I didn't know.  Some of them were reading parts of their doctoral thesis.  We got a mid morning break but we should have taken a minutes or two between speakers to stand up and stretch.  Sitting in a dark, warm quiet room encourages people to nod off.  Lunch wasn't until 1:00 p.m.  Lunch was served in the cafeteria and it was good.  I was expecting sandwiches but it was much better than that.  And there were cookies.

 We had some time off until the first workshop at 2:30. I think all the workshops were based on embroidery in the Winterthur Museum.

  My first workshop was with Tricia.

  It is a small sampler that had some fancy stitching at the bottom of it.

 We are concentrating on the fancy stitching as the rest of the sampler is straight forward.  We have a doodle cloth and some special thread that I haven't used before.  We are to do a rectangle of four-sided stitches.  No problem, I can do that.  But we only have an hour and a half for the workshop, luckily we have this class again tomorrow.  I get my four sided stitches done but I am one thread off!  Oh well, this is a practice piece and it is okay.
My next workshop is called Vade Mecum.   Who knows what that is? We go to the library.  We get to see very old books of embroidery.  We find that vade mecum means "ready reference".  It is a book of embroidery designs for inspiration and patterns.  We are up close and personal with the books and they even let us turn the pages and take photos.

  I really enjoyed seeing the books.  It was very interesting even though it was making something.
After the last workshop there was a reception with wine and appetizers.  I stayed a little while but I wanted to drive back to the hotel while it was still light.  Yes, even with Matilda, I got a bit lost on the way back to the hotel.  I had to stop and make sure Matilda knew the right address.  I made it back but it was a harrowing trip through steep hills and narrow roads.  Whew.  The hotel was across the street from a TGI Fridays to I went and got some pot sitckers (another guilty pleasure) to eat in my room.  What a day!  I worked on the sampler to make sure I was ready for class the next day.
A