Long Awaited Happy Dance

This is a long awaited Happy Dance!  Every New Year's Day a group of my "local" (Eastern Ontario) stitching friends and I start a new project and its always a stitch-a-long.  Sometimes its a paticular chart, sometimes a specific designer, and every now and then a theme.  We have a get together every Labour Day long weekend at Kathy's and this is where we discuss/decide/dictate what the SAL piece is going to be on New Year's Day.

 Stitching Row

c2010 Bent Creek

Stitched on: 28ct Moon Princess Jubilee

Stitched with: GAST, Carrie's Creations, WDW, and Kreinik

On January 1, 2014 many of the members of the "Travelling Stitcherhood" as we have dubbed ourselves started Bent Creek's Stitching Row.  I of course then got wrapped up in other projects and ignored it until this past weekend where I managed to finish it very quickly!

I just love this piece and I had so much fun picking custom colours for this one as Bent Creek's version was just so ... ahem... my apologies... dull!

I of course needed to bling it up and the swirls were perfect for that!  I also love the touch of Krenik I used to sew on the button for the letter "O".

There's so many great little stitching details on this piece, from skeins of floss, needle and thread, and a lovely pair of scissors with a cute strawberry fob.  I also stitched the letter "D" in a different colour from the most of the letters for my first name "Danielle"

If you're thinking about stitching this piece, pull out the chart, don't be afraid to play with your stash of threads and be creative!  Though everyone accuses me of being a fast stitcher it is a great quick stitch!  When framed this is going to look great on my wall of stitching related pieces!

Adventures of the Travelling Stitcherhood

I had a wonderful stitchy weekend!  Back during our last two Timberhouse Retreats Sheila started talking about having us all out to Georgian Bay (an amazing part of Ontario!) for a stitching weekend, this weekend it became a reality.

Matilda and our hostess Sheila meet for the first time

Christin and I drove down to Brighton and hooked up with part of the weekend's group.  We got into the car with Beatrice and Kathy from there we met up with Barb, Judie, and Angie and started our secondary highway tour to the Georgian Bay area.  For the first time (like ever) I wasn't a driver!  It was a gorgeous, leisurely drive with a nice lunch break!  At our lunch stop at JUST Eddie's we officially named our group the Travelling Stitcherhood and that we had to have t-shirts made up.  As the weekend went on we decided our group needed a motto : Stitch.Eat.Sleep.  From the motto it moved onto a mission statement : Resistance is Futile.  Then by the end of the weekend we all had nick names!  I am now officially the Dragon Lady!

The Travelling Stitcherhood

Back L to R Trista, Bonnie, Christin, Angie, Rebbecca

Middle L to R Barb, Ann, Sylvia, Judie, Clare

Front L to R Me, Kathy, Beatrice, Sheila

The House

The Cottage

Wonderful ponds just off of the house deck

Luckily the frogs stayed in the pond... all weekend!

In the end once everyone arrived we were 14 stitchers in total!  In attendance were : me, Christin, Kathy, Beatrice, Barb, Angie, Judie, Ann, Sheila, Clare, Sylvia, Rebbecca, Bonnie, and Trista.  Sheila has an amazing home and cottage on her property on the shores of Lake Huron (one of the Great Lakes).  There was plenty of room for everyone and we all had beds too!  Some stayed in the house and some stayed in the cottage.  Not only was her home beautiful, the grounds were lovely, and the view amazing!  It was hard to keep focused on all the stitching we needed to do when nature was dazzling us each time we looked up.

The Amazing View of Georgian Bay

Judie and Beatrice settling in to stitch on the deck

Plenty of seats outside

Christin and Beatrice stitching in Sheila's huge sun room

Matilda made the trip as well, she's hoping the weather will clear for us

The weather didn't exactly co-operate for being outdoors and enjoying mother nature, but on the other hand we were there to stitch!  We certainly accomplished that!

Angie working hard

Over the weekend I managed to finish up Jason's Wedding sampler in under two weeks!

Wedding Row

c2006 Bent Creek

Stitched on : 28ct Wichelt Dried Time Joblean

Stitched with : DMC

Then Celestial Dragon Came out to play

During the drive home CD was a little too complicated so Art Deco Spirits got some love.

Matilda supervised, making sure we all were focused on our stitching

Checking out the cool stuff online with Kathy

Sheila's dog Molly cuddling up with Trista for a snooze

We were all sad to leave, but Sheila's husband treated me to a ride on his Spider (3 wheeled motorcycle, two wheels in front one in rear) which really brightened my day and made leaving all that more harder!

I can't wait to go and visit Sheila and Jim again!

Oh boy it was hard to come back to the real world when there's heaven on Earth!