I am still alive and stitchin'

Hi everyone - I hope that you are all great! I am fantastic, but super-busy both at work and at home, so I have been slacking both on the blog-posting side and the blog-reading front. I hope that I will be able to shape up soon! I apologize for not keeping up with all of your blogs, but that is the big goal for Sunday! As always, thanks for all your comments; they mean so much to me. I am still in awe every day about the fact that blogging is such a wonderful connector to stitchers all over the world. I am still as excited about blogging today than I was when I started.

Well, enough blubbering - let's get down to business! As you may remember, last weekend I took two classes with Sherri Jones of Patricks Woods; The Lucet and Hare Pyns. We had a blast and we learned so much! Now I have taken 4 classes with Sherri and I am always impressed with her teaching skills, her personality and sense of humour (her stories are simply hilarious!) and her fantastic designs. I have never taken a class with her without learning something new.
We started off with the Lucet class on Saturday morning. We were about 20 ladies, I would guess, and we were lucetting our little fingers off all day long. So much fun!
Here is Sherri showing off various types of lucets:

.. and here is a small sample of different types of cording you can make with the lucet (beaded, flat, square, multi-colored - you name it!):

DH often claims that I am "easily amused" (is that a bad thing? - I don't think so) - and he may have a point... Apparently I found something to really laugh about here - note that the ladies around me look more skeptical than grinning their faces off like yours truly.... ;-)

Here is a close-up of the Rovaris necklace upon request! (Thanks for taking the pic Froggie and enjoy Joyce! LOL)

Lady P was the hostess for the Lucet class. We crashed her house on the way out to dinner and wow, we were in heaven! She has a vast collection of gorgeous samplers everywhere. I took photos of pretty much all of them, but I will only give you a teaser here.
The is Lady P next to her Dutch Beauty. I can not even begin to tell you how pretty this sampler is - or how huge it is!

A true Kentucky couple's home - samplers on the wall and NASCAR on TV!

Part of Lady P's smalls collection - is this not just the best piece of furniture for a fabulous display?

And this is a fantastic - simply beautiful - large box topped with a Periwinkle Promises sampler. I am pretty sure that this was a class project.

Well, I had too much fun to remember to get my camera out. Dinner was great - Sherri, Lady P, L-bug and a new friend, Amy, and I went out for dinner at a steak place. We had such a nice time. Amy is just the sweetest lady and she got us all desert off the menu simply by giving the waitress one of those puppy-dog looks that you can not say no to. Amy is also a blogger - she blogs e-v-e-r-y d-a-y - can you believe it!? If you get a chance, please swing by over to check out her blog and say hi - she would love to have you stop by, I'm sure: Thread in Hand!
After dinner, L-bug and I went back home to her house. She was kind enough to let me stay over from Friday night to Sunday, which decreased my travel time by 150%! She is the sweetest friend one could ever wish for; she left chocolate and candy in the guest-bedroom for me, had a full breakfast menu, and let me play in her stash for hours. What 4-star hotel has a stash to play in? Not many, I bet!

The Hare Pyns finishing class started early Sunday morning. We were about 12 ladies at various stages of completion and we had a great time! I brought my sewing machine all the way from Kentucky and was so annoyed that I could not get the tension of the sewing thread right through the entire class. It wasn't until I was all packed up and half-way back home that I realized that the thread spool should have been in the vertical position and not the horizontal position - sigh!!! Well, that's what happens when you try to sew too early in the morning... LOL
I love the concept of "finishing class". I am pretty good about whipping up the stitched part of a design, but the finishing step is one that generally takes me a loooong time to get to.
Well, I did not get everything finished in class - far from it - but I got enough done to motivate me to stick to it. Lookie what I finished yesterday night!

The only thing that I am not 100% happy with is the overlap of the ribbon used for the pocket border. I have one corner that sticks out too much and I do not like the look of it. However, it is way too late to try to fix it, so unfortunately, it is what it is. I am very happy about most of the rest (but I seriously do have to invest in a great pair of scallop fabric shears so that my felt pieces don't look like I chewed them into shape....)

Well, so one project down, hundreds to go. It does not help that I accidentally picked up a bunch of new kits and patterns from Sherri. I am really excited about starting on a couple of these, but seeing that I have a 20-project WIP list and that the lucet piece will require many hrs of TLC before I have manufactured the required number of yards of cording, I will have to brace myself. By the way, did I mention that I am going to another stitching retreat in about a week? I'll tell you more about in my next post.... Wink-wink...

And speaking of stash - a huge box awaited me today when I finally got home from work ay 9:30 PM. Stash!!!!! The pile of silks in the front is for the Shores of HRH SAL that Valerie of A Shenadoah Sampler and I are planing on doing here soon. Oh, I can't wait!!!!

I know that 9:30 sounds pretty late to come home from work, but today was a special occasion. We had in our Swedish representatives and customers for meetings at work all day today. It was a lot of fun to speak Swedish and it is also easier to ask and discuss harder questions a lot more directly in someone's native tongue, so I was invited to come along to do the wine and dine thing. Dinner was held at one of the local Bourbon distilleries and we had such a great time! The weather was even good enough that we sat outdoors for most of the dinner. The guests did not want to leave, but luckily they did not have a choice (good planning on the hosts part...) since the chartered bus came and whisked them back to the hotel at 9PM sharp! Good thing too, they are leaving town 5:30 tomorrow morning! :-o
Well, I need to get up pretty soon here too, so I'd better get going (I can hear DH snoring all the way from the bed-room...). Bubba is sitting behind me on the couch back-rest and seems a bit antsy, so it is time to get him back to his cage for some night snacks, I think.

Well, since Henny is already in bed, I guess that I don't have any choice but to end this post with some bunny pictures.
Bubba says "Do not touch my carrot!!!"

It is a hard life being this cute. Better take a nap...

Looking at Bubba napping makes me tired too. Time to get to bed!
Good night and sweet stitching dreams to everyone!