Auburn, Indiana Getaway Weekend

Last weekend was my getaway with some of the Russellville girls.  We've decided this is going to be an annual thing.  We've already booked our stay at the Inn at Windmere, for next year!  Paul and Susie always make our stay so enjoyable we really don't want to leave!

We met again this year for lunch on Friday at what used to be known as the Busy Brush Cafe but is now under new ownership and is called The Cranberry Cupboard.  I couldn't resist taking a picture of the tea pot collection.  Almost all of these ended up on our table as several of us had hot tea.  It was a very cold and blustery day...perfect tea weather!

After lunch we browsed around in the attached gift shop.  I found this cool bracelet and couldn't leave without it.  I wore it for the rest of the day.  I often like to find a piece of jewelry to remember a trip.

We also went a couple blocks up to the uptown square and did some antiquing.  I scored this vintage Whitman's tin.  The photo is deceiving.  It's actually about 12" square!  A great size to house a project.  It has some chipped paint but I don't mind.  Thanks to Patti for spotting it for me!  The very best part was I got it for less than $5 and that was with tax!

After our little shopping adventures, we headed out to the B & B to get settled in and stitch until dinner.  This is Patti and I's room.  It's called the "sunrise" room.  Yes, it does face the east.  I just love the style of this bed and bedding.  So girly!

As per usual, I packed way too much crap stuff and really only worked on this all weekend.  From the size of my bag you'd have thought I was going to be stranded on an island for months.  LOL!  Truth be told, I pulled the floss for this as an after thought while I was waiting for Patti to get to my house.  The only one I couldn't find was the darkest blue.  I figured it was just DMC so I could pick it up in the morning on our visit to Stitch n' Frame, who now has an online presence.  Yay!
  

The next morning we were thoroughly spoiled by a huge breakfast cooked by Susie and Paul.  I don't eat that much breakfast in a whole week!  After we rolled away from the table, we grabbed our shopping lists, charts, and headed to Ft. Wayne.  This is the sight that greets you when you walk into Stitch n' Frame!

As you can tell from this picture it goes way back too.  There's lots of goodness to peruse in here!  I had emailed ahead to warn let them know we were coming.  It was busy in the shop without our crew descending upon them.  Good thing they had extra help on hand.  LOL!

Here's a peek at the fabric wall from my seat at the stitching table.  I had already done my damage and was waiting for everyone to finish up.  We rightly enhanced the economy for sure.  It was fun to have show and tell when we got back at the Inn.

Here's a peek at my haul!  I was surprised that they still had quite a few Prairie Schooler charts still in stock.  I had a list of things I was actually looking for and found almost all of them too.  I just love those John James 24 needles, I needed another small project bag and I always pick up one of those LoRan threaders when I see them.  I can't have too many.  The flosses have a funny story I'll share in a minute.  See, I found my DMC too!

Is it me or do these three flosses all look the same to you?!  My peep, Linda, pointed this out to me at the last stitch-in.  So I decided my main mission when I got to the stitch shop was to find substitutes for at least two of them.

Here's what I came up with.  The dye lot they had for Walnut was significantly different than the one I had which is often the case with over-dyes so that was easy.  The next one I couldn't decide between the two so I bought them both.  I'm kinda of leaning toward the Weeks one.  I kept my original floss on the end.

Here's the project these are going to be used for..the big bee.  The middle three colors in the above picture are the ones for the bee's legs so I really wanted something relatively dark compared to the other two browns.  I think I've got a good bunch to work with now.  Who knows when I'll actually start this one.  I'm prepared though!

After our shopping trip we went next door for some lunch at Pizza King.  For my Indiana readers (waves to Vonna) you know this is an institution and so good.  I grew up eating Pizza King and am a bit nostalgic about the place.  There's much more on the menu than just pizza.  We all ended up having sandwiches since we knew pizza was on the menu for our dinner.  Yum!

Here we all are on Sunday morning after yet another tasty breakfast!  As I said before, we thoroughly enjoy ourselves when we visit Windmere.  We really don't want to leave but real life calls us back.  So after the photos were taken, we gave our hugs and said our goodbyes until we see each other again next summer in Russellville.

~*~*~*~

Art by Jean Jullien

I want to pause here and to say that our weekend was good in spite of the tradgedy in Paris Friday night.  Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to all of those impacted by it.  I continue to send positive thoughts to my favorite city on earth.  May healing and peace come to the city of light and love.

~*~*~*~

Thanks for visiting today. I hope you enjoyed coming along with me to Auburn.  Time spent with stitching friends is always the best.  Have a good rest of your week!


Until next time,

The Inspired Stitcher

QCSG Party!

Our party this year was held at the Warren County Historical Society and Museum.  The part where our party was held used to be the town's post office!  It was a nice open space with lots of natural light.

When you first entered the room there were several tables set up next to the windows for the guild's anniversary sampler display.  I was impressed with the number of folks who worked on and completed this SAL.  As I mentioned before, I shamelessly did not...more than one big a$$ project a year is enough for me!

Check out the size of these and you see what I mean about a BAP!  I'm giving the wonder woman cape to all these girls.  You all rock!

Of course no guild get together would be complete without some show and tell!  I love this one.  I've got it in the stash.  It was gifted to me by my dear friend Toni several years ago.  I haven't forgotten about it!

Our guest lecturer even brought some show and tell of her own!  Love the strawberries in this sweet set!

She's designing this one for the Magnolia Sampler Guild.  How lucky these ladies are going to be to stitch this beauty.  And to think, it's not even finished yet!  Theresa told us she stitches all her own models and designs as she goes.  How interesting!

This was one of my favorites.  I love all the flowers and those chickens are really fun too!  She had  the chart for this one with her for sale but I didn't bring any money.  It was a bit pricey so it was just as well.

We got a sneak peek at a group project for next year.  Some of our guild members are designing smalls for us and we will have a finishing class later in the year.  How cute is this?  I like the idea.  I can see myself changing up the colors and fabric.  Fun!

Here's a peek at the ornament tree!  We had quite a few really pretty ornaments this year.  I always enjoy seeing the various ways folks choose to finish their ornaments.

As I've mentioned to some of you in the comments from last time, my ornament was a hit!  I'm so glad everyone liked it.  I had never met the lady that got it.  I hope she enjoys it as much as I enjoyed coming up with the design and stitching it.

~*~*~*~

I hope you enjoyed the peek at the party.  It was fun to get together with everyone.  There were some folks I visited with that I hadn't seen since last year.  That's always so much fun.

Speaking of visiting with folks I haven't seen in a while, this weekend is the annual fall retreat with the "Russellville" girls at the Inn at Windmere.  I'm really looking forward to getting away.  Our agenda has us eating way too much, stitching a whole lot, shopping and all around relaxing.  Pretty close to heaven if you ask me!

Thanks for all your sweet comments on my last post and for stopping by to visit today.


More next time,

The Inspired Stitcher

Guild Ornament - Finish!

This year our guild's Christmas party is super early for reasons I'm not totally clear on but I suspect it has to do with our guest speaker's schedule.  We will have Theresa from Heart's Ease Sampler Workes coming to lecture on designing our Guild's anniversary sampler.  No, I'm not stitching it.  It's a BAP and I'm limiting my self to one at a time.  I've learned my lesson.  LOL!

So anywho, tomorrow is the party.  Typically we have it in the first half of December. I am not ready to even think about the holidays yet but I did manage to stitch an ornament for the annual exchange.  Want to see what I came up with?  You know you do!

Here's the chart I used.  This chart has so many possibilities!

Here 'tis with the stitching finished...all but the initials and date on it.

Design: Christmas Alphabet Book #64

Designer: Prairie Schooler

Fabric: 40ct. mystery scrap

Floss:  Called for DMC

Started: 10/18/15

Finished: 11/2/15

Completed: 11/4/15

I chose to use the initials of the Guild in this configuration so it would end up square.  I chose the 40ct so it would be relatively small or at least an appropriate ornament size.  The fabric in the background is what I used on the back.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  So if you are a guild member reading this, you could be the lucky one to get this cutie.

I'm planning to take a bunch of pictures tomorrow.  I have a feeling the show and tell is going to be fantastic and I'm hoping there will be lots of ornaments on the ornament tree too.  Stay tuned!

~*~*~*~

Thanks so much for visiting today and listening to my rambles.  I hope your weekend is good and you get to put a needle into something.  I know you all can barely stand it that I've actually posted twice this week.  You just never know about me.  I'm a wild one like that.  LOL!

More next time,

The Inspired Stitcher

I have been remiss...

Hello all...remember me?  Yeah, I fell off the face of the earth for the month of October.  I want to thank those who checked in on me last month.  Your emails have meant the world to me.  It's been a stressful time since our last visit.

DH had a major health scare the end of September and it took the entire month of October to figure out what was up.  Needless to say that level of stress is not conducive to any kind of creativity in my world.  It's really hard to watch someone you love struggle and you can't fix it for them.  Let alone be at the mercy of the insurance company, hospital and doctors.  I won't even get on a rant about that...enough said.

The good news is he will be just fine.  I'm not going into detail here about what happened for privacy reasons.  I will say it wasn't at all what we'd feared and with some meds we can manage it.  This is doable and we are blessed.  I have to say going through something like this really sets your priorities in line.  Thank you to those who sent up extra prayers for us.  We can't even begin to express our appreciation.

~*~*~*~

So let's get on to some more cheery news.   I was contacted back in April by a lovely lady named Judy for an interview about my blog.  It was a Q  & A type thing and she asked for a few pictures of some current stitching.  I had actually forgotten about it when Jo over at Serendipitous Stitching emailed me to congratulate me for being published!

Here it is!  I'm in the September 2015 issue.  Unfortunately, since I'm so remiss in sharing this with everyone I doubt it's still on the news stands.  Here in the states it may be since some places keep the UK magazines on the stand for a couple months at a time.  However, not to worry!  Cross Stitch Collection offers back issues on their website here.

Here's the actual article.  I have to say it was kind of surreal seeing my face in a magazine along with my stitching.  I chose to show the pieces that I'm most proud of accomplishing.  You know I had to include the Hornbook.  Snooty was a major accomplishment too.  I put the needle book in because it was the most recent finish I had at the time of the interview.  I also put in the bee locket.  I see that picture all over Pinterest.  I guess you all really really liked that one.  Last but not least, I couldn't resist sharing the freebie from The Dandy Hare blog that I turned into a floss tag.

I was having trouble finding a copy of the magazine when it first came to my attention so Jo kindly offered to send me one.  I asked her if there was anything she would like me to send her in trade and she requested the DMC Color Variations.  We can get them individually here or in these nifty gift packs (pop over to Jo's to see them out of the package).  I couldn't choose between these two so I just got them both.  I also just had to make her a little something more to thank her for her kindness.  I found this perfect frog fabric for a project pouch.  I told those frogs to mind their manners when they got to Jo's house.  I hope they are behaving.


When asked if I had anything to add to the article in the end, I just had to mention the community we have here in the blog-o-sphere.  I am still amazed that folks other than the peeps and my local guild members would read my blog.  You all are so sweet!

I feel like I have friends from all around the globe that I've "met" as a result of this blog.  I've even been fortunate enough to actually meet some of you in person.  It truly is a wonderful thing we have here.  We support each other and enable each other!

Thank you to each and every one of you for being here and visiting with me.  If I could give you all a hug I would!  I'll try not to let too much time pass before our next visit.  Be well and hug the ones you love.

Until next time,
The Inspired Stitcher