Celebration of Needlework 2011

Or, "How I Suffered a Knee Injury While Stitching." *sigh*

So after much waffling, I made a hotel reservation and signed up for a class at Celebration in NH. DH told me I should take a weekend for myself, and my mother paid for a large chunk of the cost as a birthday gift, so there wasn't (too much) guilt or any financial reason not to go...

I got there around dinnertime on Friday, and met up with Carol (cebmd from The Wagon) and her friend Alda. We all caught up over dinner in the hotel restaurant, and then headed up to the stitching lounge for a while. I worked on "Melville's Return" for a couple hours, and of course I perused the piles of unwanted/donated patterns!

Saturday I got up around 7:30, showered, made myself coffee, and stitched in my room while watching re-runs of Law & Order on cable. Ahhh, it truly IS the little things... LOL (And my room had lovely natural light for stitching, so it really was a perfect morning!) Then I went down and wandered around the vendor booths for a while before my class - "The Witch is In" with Louise Henderson. I felt that this class was better organized and more informative than the one I took in 2009, but most of the focus was - logically - on the finishing, since the stitching is just basic cross stitch. And I'm afraid I'll forget all the little hints and tips by the time I get around to the actual finishing! Oh well, at least I have all the materials, and the Louise's instructions are really very good.
Of course I purchased a few things.
- My mother has requested "something with chickens." Dad has decided he wants to raise chickens - and sell eggs! - so Mom wants a silly chicken stitched piece for the house. She specifically said, "no proud, heroic chickens." Hrm? According to Mom "heroic chickens" = roosters crowing at a rising sun sort of things. So when I saw these, I decided they were the epitome of non-heroic chickens. It was more than I'd planned to spend, but ah well, we only live once, and they are cute little buggers.
- For myself, I picked up With Thy Needle and Thread's Candy Corn pattern, and some yellow linen upon which to stitch it.
- Oh, and a "thread hopper" from My Big Toe Designs...yes, I know it would be an easy enough thing to make myself, just two needles tied together with a pretty bead or 2 in the middle. But I used to have a pretty all beaded one that my cat ATE, and ever since that incident I've lamented my lack of such a tool. Since I've not made one yet, it seems that I probably won't, and it was much simpler to just buy the darned thing!

Saturday night I returned to the stitchers' lounge, since I couldn't afford to do both the class and the Saturday night dinner event. And that was fine, because the lounge was practically empty and I got quite a bit done on my Iris Sampler. Plus, I met Measi and her friend Lisa! There was much laughing and weirdness....and stitching, of course. And we stayed up entirely too late. But I still got myself out of bed early this morning and made it back home by about 3 pm, just enough time to spend about an hour with Little Bit before heading off to work at Job #2 from 4:30-9 tonight. Yawn.

Oh, and my knee "injury"? Evidently the shoes I was wearing combined with the length of time I spent with my leg propped up straight out in front of me (usually on a footstool or table or something) created some issues for my knee. Over-extension, perhaps? I don't know, but I feel absolutely arthritic now. Ouch.