Fall Stitching Retreat at Elim Lodge

This weekend was our guild's fall stitching retreat. I drove up to Elim Lodge on Thursday morning, arriving at about 11:30am and promptly got set up to stitch.

As I had done at a previous retreat, I took a bunch of UFOs/WIPs and planned to spend at least an hour on each one on one of the retreat days. That day ended up being Friday.

I figured I loved each one of these projects when I started them so would give them a bit of love again and see if I would actually want to finish some of them.

In no particular order, I worked on 9 projects, at least an hour on each.

The turtle project was a kit I started in 2020. It has a combination of stitching with one or two strands with 28 colours and about a dozen blended colours (two different colours in the needle). I'm not stitching it on the Aida cloth it came with but substituted some white linen, possibly 28ct or 32ct. It's slow going with all the colour changes but boy, am I ever glad I gridded it.

It had been so long since I worked on it, it took me a while to see which way was up to find my place in the pattern. 

The next one was whitework on a linen band which I hadn't touched since the fall of 2021 at Elim. It's from a Mary Hickmott magazine from 1997. 

I got the bottom 4 rows done and will definitely work on this some more.

I finished the first of the Green Pears from Annie Beez. The pattern, silk floss, and fabric were a birthday gift this year.

I started the next pear which is a funky, script alphabet.

I worked on two of the white flowers on my Teresa Kogut 'Newcastle Bouquet' which I started in July 2020.

I also did the dragonfly. I had to change the called-for colour for the dragonfly wings and flowers as they were too close to the colour of the fabric. I'm going to outline them with light grey backstitching.

I did a little bit more on "It's Spring Fever" from Blackbird Designs. I'm really close to being finished.

The photo on the pattern does not do it any justice. I did however, realize I had used the wrong colour for the bottom half of the bottom fruit in the bowl - brown instead of light blue. Oh well. It looks OK the way I did it. 

I finished a couple of the stars on the Live On Little piece. I had planned to start the 'mortar' on the house but neglected to bring my collection of floss for selecting it. I also left my wallet at home and had to bum Poppy's debit card when I went to Jesse's for dinner in Ennismore. We don't get food service at the retreat until Friday night so customarily some of us go to Jesse's for supper on the Thursday night.

I started this in the fall a year ago. The pattern came with the silk threads.

I'm doing it on 46ct Bristol linen and it's an eyeball buster. I just realized I stitched the part below the star in the wrong place so need to do some calculating to see if I'll run out of fabric if I keep going or will I have to pick out 1 over 2 silk floss on 46ct. And this is supposed to be a relaxing hobby...

My final UFO/WIP was the whitework I started last week from Yvette Stanton's book "Frisian Whitework". 

I achieved my goal of finishing the top band. I then did the row of chain stitches underneath which took WAY longer than I thought they would.

The final project I worked on was a new start, the Autumn Biscornu from Erin Elizabeth Designs - a pattern I bought at Colorado Cross Stitcher a couple of weeks ago. 

I'm using some mystery 35ct tea dyed linen from my stash which was a remnant from something or other. It's a darned good thing it was tea dyed because I spilled my Bengal Spice tea all over it. The spill doesn't show at all and my fabric now smells nice and spicy. It could have been disastrous had I been working on any other project!

Maggie Mae and the Sunflower Sewing Pouch were a big hit, on the Show and Share table.

We had beautiful weather this weekend; warm with lots of sunshine. Some of us stayed in cabins for the first time. They had everything we needed. As usual I took my foam mattress pad and duvet so was very cozy on the hard beds they provide. After stitching each evening, Barb and I would come back to our lodgings and play NYTimes Games on my iPad. The food served in the dining hall was well-prepared as well. All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend.

I probably won't be attending our spring retreat as I just registered for the Hobby House event the same weekend. Featured designers are Beth Twist from Heartstring Samplery and Paulette Stewart from Plum Street Samplers. I'm always happy to have an excuse to visit Hobby House Needleworks and it's sure to be a fun event.