Celebration of Needlework 2016

So, the weekend recap.

I arrived after about a 6-hour drive, puttering my way across NYS and Massachusetts.  (I often have other people gasp when I tell how them long it takes me to get there....however, I see the drive as a lovely bit of me-time, and fill it with music, audiobooks - this time it was "Mirrormask" by Neil Gaiman - and interesting conversations with myself!)  My room was funny - room 201, at the very end of the hall tucked away behind one of the stairwells.  A corner room, too, so the natural light was quite lovely for stitching in the mornings!  The hotel was remodeled since last year's event, and it was very nice.

I met up with my usual bunch of friends in the hotel restaurant, and dove right into the stitching.  Before dinner I was able to finish my Prairie Schooler "Winter" sampler!

I can't seem to get the colors right on this when I photograph it....it is stitched with Vikki Clayton's HDF silks on a piece of "Pumice" dyed fabric from Kiwi Illusions/Countrystitch.  The white really does "pop" more than it appears in this picture!

Then I moved on to TIAG's "Family Treasure III" sampler for a while.  I don't have a picture, but I did finish a band or two, as well as turning some kind of weird looking hearts into lazy daisy flowers (or maybe butterflies, as one of my friends commented).

On Friday I stitched more, shopped too much, and took a class.  I chose Janis Note's "Stitcher's Chest" class this year, and I think it was well worth the cost.  Here is the picture from Celebration's website -

The kit was really lovely, and Janis was a lot of fun.  In class we made the tassel for the little scissor fob, and had a chance to start some of the stitching on the fob itself.  I'm a rather slow stitcher (and Janis DID take a lot of time on the tassel construction), so I didn't get the fob completely assembled, but all of the stitches are ones I'm familiar with, so it shouldn't be too much for me.

Saturday brought more stitching, shopping, and another finish - this is Bent Creek's "Early Bird" design from an older magazine.

As always, I made changes.  Since this is an older pattern that probably predates the hand-dyed floss craze, it was charted in all DMC.  I decided I wanted some variegation, so I swapped out the yellow for the sun and the 2 shades of green for the lettering.  I had initially thought about putting this inside one of those empty alarm clocks, kind of like the snowman in the pocketwatch....but even on the 32-ct. fabric that I used, it is too big.  :(  So instead I'm going to try to mount it on a plaque of some kind and handpaint the words to one of my favorite Shel Silverstein poems around it - "...if you are a bird, be an early, early bird/if you are a worm, sleep late."  

And how much damage did I do shopping?  Well, let's see.

• Barberry Row's "D is for Dreams" kit.
  
• Summer House Stitche Workes' "Galileo's Telescope" - I actually made a beeline for this one straight away, having seen it on Facebook and deciding I MUST have it.  It is also the first in a three-part series, which I tend to avoid....but this design can stand alone.  And Beth showed me the completed "mystery piece" that goes along with it, and it is really adorable in a primitive way!
• A piece of blue-green hand-dyed fabric from the Zweigart/Silkweaver table, and a tin topper pattern of a little boat and compass rose to stitch on it.
• A stiletto/laying tool from Wood Turnings by Cynthia.  It was kind of impulsive, but after doing the lazy daisies on my sampler and driving myself crazy trying to keep my threads smooth, I decided I NEEDED one.  And she had some from a discontinued line, so it wasn't too expensive.  Her things are just so pretty!  (I don't think her website is running quite right, but the Gallery page DOES work.)
• A few of Sue Hillis' pirate patterns - Pirate's Creed and Pirate Queen.
• Two small frames from Olde Colonial Designs.  I'm planning to stitch some of the Prairie Schooler Santa cards over-one on 28-ct., and I think these little frames will be perfect.
• Another unnecessary, impulsive purchase - mermaid pins from the Primitive Hare.  But they were so cute, and I didn't have to pay shipping from Italy....
  
• And finally.....my big purchase....
  .........a new lamp!
  Yes, I went completely out of my budget at the very end of the show, after walking past the Craftlite booth over and over and over.  I have a Daylight next to my stitching chair at home, but the switch is going bad, and it is big and heavy and really in the way in our little living room.  (Yes yes, that is total justification on my part.)  But the 3-level LED lighted magnification on the Craftlite was amazing, and it is sleek and much more portable than the beast-light I currently have.  So it came home with me.  And it has been put to use already!  I started a new project - over-one, even - using it, and it is heavenly.  I no longer have to stitch with my glasses off and miss TV shows.  LOL

So there you have it, my annual crazy self-indulgent weekend.  Of course I pawed through the freebie exchange piles, and came home with quite a few items from there as well.  In fact, my new project is one from there - Bent Creek's "Catch the Day" design.  I made some floss substitutions based on what I had in my stash, and I'm stitching it over-one to make it into a little pouch to hold a graduation gift for a friend.

But for now it is back to work, stitching later!