Topic: Cross Stitch
I am back! It feels as if I have been away for a really long time and it sure feels good to be back home again.
Ria and I left for Dallas on February 2nd and had an uneventful flight to Atlanta and from there to Dallas. Uneventful flights are in my opinion the best there are. We slept a while, stitched a little and talked and talked and talked. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while so there was a lot to catch up on. I stitched on Stop and Stitch the Flowers from Blue Ribbon Designs and made quite some progress on the lines that form the 100 squares.
Denise picked us up in Dallas and we went home to have a wonderful meal with the family. And even though I have “only” visited her house 6 or 7 times, it feels like home everytime I walk in the door. On Saturday we went with Denise to the shop and she and Lou Ann have an amazing shop. There were new threads for us to explore, new canvases, new cross stitch books and new linens. Since they sell a lot of needlepoint canvases in the shop, most of the threads are rather different from the ones I sell. Most of them wouldn’t be usuable for linen, but they sure are a lot of fun to play around with.
Of course I couldn’t help myself and start a new canvas while I was there. This has become a sort of tradition. My challenge is to get the canvas done before I leave so that Denise can send it to the finisher. Mind you, it wouldn’t take much postage to send it to her later, but a challenge is a challenge. This year I stitched one of the Halloween birds from Melissa Shirley Designs, called Crow with Spots. It is so much fun to select threads and stitches for these canvases. I used a Diamond Ray Stitch turned sideways for his body, which makes it look like he actually has feathers. There is another birdie in my stash that I hope to get done before Halloween this year.
Apart from this canvas, I picked up quite a few more. My favorite must be the one from Pat Thode, it is a Halloween/Fall design and I hope that once it is stitched, I can finish it as a pillow. Heartstrings, the company for which Pat Thode designs, has a website now and I just LOVE it. There is so much to see!
While we were there, the ladies had a trunk show from Associated Talents. This company has some very neat canvases. I managed to find a heart scissor fob, a scissor case and an Easter egg that just had to come home with me. The scissor fob and scissor case are not companion pieces, but I think by using the same threads, I’ll be able to make them companion pieces.
Let’s see what else made it into my bag. I got a really cute canvas that will be turned into a cell phone pocket once it is stitched. It is in gold, white, dark brown metallic and black with some grey. I think this will be a fun piece to play around with stitches. I got some nifty threads for this one and it shouldn’t take that long to stitch up.
On Thursday we left for Nashville. We both got a tiny bit of stitching done on the plane but there wasn’t much room to stitch, so we gave up. In Nashville we had diner with Mary, Nicky and Candy from The Workbasket. We have been going to the same restaurant for three years now and it’s a hoot. It’s real Southern food, meaning everything is deep fried, you get everything on one platter and it is all very yummy.
Friday was spent in classrooms, Ria and I had both 3 different classes. The new concept of each class lasting 1.5hrs was interesting, though I am not sure if it will be repeated again. Personally I think I prefer to have a little more time to learn a new technique or stitch. The classes themselves were really interesting, I learnt how to do more with beads and how to combine scrapbooking with stitching. I also learnt that I do not particularly like stumpwork LOL. Ria learnt a new finishing technique as well as the peyote stitch to be used for beads. She also did a canvas class and managed to get the piece finished while we were still in Nashville. I am sure that apart from the stumpwork, you will see more of these classes in the shop at one point or another.
Friday evening we went to the Meet and Greet. Designers can rent a small table and give you a sample of what you can expect the next day in their suite. And after seeing boxes being delivered all day on Friday, I can tell you that we both were more than ready to see some of the new stuff. The suspense was almost too much. So we did tour all the tables, picked up our paperwork, picked up a few chocolates as well and were back in the hotel around 9:30pm. We went over the paperwork to decide which designers we definitely needed to see on Saturday and which ones we’d do on Sunday.
Saturday morning we could hardly wait to get started. As usual we went first to The Thread Gatherer to pick up more of CeCe’s beautiful threads. After that, well to be honest, most of that is a blurr. We did go up to the 6th floor to R&R Reproductions, went down again to the 4th floor and spent considerable time there. There are always a lot of designers that we need to see on the 4th floor. We managed to get the 5th floor done as well and a few designers on the 2nd floor. By 6pm we were really done for the day.
So up we went to Denise and Lou Ann’s room to eat pizza and start checking orders and pricing everything. Of course we needed to see what everybody had bought as that is part of the fun. We were really happy with everything we bought and going over all the charts and kits while pricing them, makes you realize that there just aren’t enough hours in a day. Once we got back to our own hotel, we had to do more checking and pricing and to give you an idea of what that looks like, here are Ria’s and my bed.
Sunday was another day of shopping. We had to fix some orders from Saturday, but could spent most of the day shopping for more designs, accessoiries and threads. We did pick up some Dinky Dye silks for those who would like to give them a try as well as some Carrie’s Threads (cotton). And we got some emery strawberries to keep your needles in. Sunday evening is pretty much the same routine, checking and pricing, ordering diner and some stitching.
Monday morning we packed our suitcases, wondering if we’d be overweight or not. It is too bad that no decent hotel has a scale that you can use for this purpose LOL. We tried to estimate the weight of our suitcases and we must have done a pretty good job as neither one of them was overweight. Of course it did help that all the large size leaflets were in my new Vera Bradley bag.
Flying back home was again very uneventful. We both didn’t sleep very much on the plane, it looked as if we had less leg space than on the way over. Upon arrival we had a welcoming committee waiting for us, which was sooooo nice. We had coffee and finally it was time to retreive all items from Ria’s suitcases and be on our way. We drove straight to the shop as it didn’t make sense to carry the suitcases up 6 flights of stairs and then down again. So we got everything sorted out in the shop and made sure everything was ready for the Nashville preview afternoon. I was back home around 4pm and Miss Murphy was so enthralled to see me again, she didn’t leave my side. It is funny how she’ll loose hair because she is so happy. After an hour or so it is over.
Well, this became a really long post and there are still more pictures to show. I hope that my internet connection will be restalled soon so that I can do that over the weekend.
