Mystery Needle Arts Retreat and ANG Seminar

I had a long but uneventful plane ride to Columbus, Ohio to attend the Mystery Needle Arts Retreat. If y'all don't know about this stitching experience, it's great fun. There are four teachers who over the course of a year design and independently stitch sections of a canvas. They trade instructions so each one ends up with an entire piece but done in their own colors. The instructors are Mary Hartman, Mary Knapp, Linda Reinmiller and Debbie Rowley. You sign up for the retreat without seeing the piece. They post their canvas colors and threads on line and you pick the color you like.

When you get the retreat at the reception they show you the piece, this year has lots of sparkle and to be honest I love them all. They also are getting better and better every year. If you want more info. go to http://needleartsmysteryretreat.com. We've only been coming a few years but they offer the chance to take the prior year's piece before the new piece and I've caught up and have all their pieces at home (unstitched of course).

Last night they told us that next years will be in Portland, Oregon. The nice thing is that it is a smaller group and is held in a smaller and less expensive hotel than the big national seminars. This year the hotel is in Grove, Ohio just outside of Columbus and is a really nice Drury Inn.

Well, my stitching is calling and I better get going.

More later.

So much for good intentions

I said I was going to post more often, but as you can see the month got away from me. I've been stitching like crazy and trying to keep up with other stuff in my life. I decided I needed to add some exercise to my life (moving your fingers just doesn't burn that many calories) so I've been doing water aerobics three days a week and between the heat and the exercise, I've had to take a nap in the afternoon so it's cut into my productivity. I know it's good for me, so plan to keep it up. It does get better, naps are getting shorter.

I sent off 4 proposals for classes at The National NeedleArts Association, which is the trade organization for the needlework industry. Now I have to finish the stitch guides. I'll need to ask the designers I'm stitching for if it's okay to post pictures of their pieces. If they give me permission, I'll put them on the website so y'all can have a sneak peak of what's coming.

The Yarn Barn where I work part-time is getting ready for ANG Seminar in August and we've had lots of canvases painted with San Antonio inspired designs. One of them is a 3-d Alamo by Squiggee Designs which I've stitch and am writing a stitch guide for. I'll post a picture in the next couple of days. It came back from the finisher and is just darling, if I do say so myself.

We got this strange wet stuff that fell out of the sky today, it's been so long since we had rain I'd forgotten where the windshield wipers were in the car. It wasn't much but it was the most we've had in months.

I'm off to a class but will try to add more next week.

Cindy

4th of July

I'm taking a short break from unpacking more boxes so I thought I'd just update my blog for today.

I finally got the shelves set up in my studio so now comes the fun part of unloading all the boxes (ugh). It is kind of interesting to open a box and find a needlepoint canvas you forgot you owned, sort of like Christmas morning, but it's also discouraging to see how much you have.

I did some stitching yesterday on a Princess and Me proposal for The National NeedleArts Association, the trade organization for shops. I need to get them all done by the July 21st since that the deadline. I'll post some pictures as I get time.

Well, back to the boxes.