Home from Retreat...

It was a wonderful weekend that went by WAY to fast.  We saw old friends, made new ones, spent time stitching and knitting, ate well but not too much, exchanged ornaments,  laughed and cried as well as raised money for the fight against breast cancer.  Dwaggie and Sneaky came along to keep me company in the sleeping bag and I put the dragon pillowcase from one of my favourite Austin store owners (right Ginger?) on my pillow.

Friday night, we arrived up at Camp Wildwood in sleet and slushy snow that made us feel like we were stuck in a snow globe.  Mom and I found an empty cabin (Squirrel A) before Nick drove us up to the main cabin to unload the stitching gear.  We set ourselves up near the back in the room and greeting familiar friends before settling down to stitch.

I’d fully intended to give away the Perforated Paper Castle ornament that I taught in Toronto, but the more people asked to see it and exclaimed over it, the more I decided it needed to stay on MY tree.  Luckily, Jeannie had brought along some colours of perforated paper for me to play with.  Unfortunately, after a full day of teaching, picking up Bethany from volleyball practice, Nick from school and then rushing to get to retreat in bad weather, I forgot the sheets of blank graph paper that I usually bring along with me...

So I made my own.

FIrst, I sketched out the letters for JOY and stitched them in overdyed threads on the white paper.

Then, I flipped the paper over, borrowed a pencil from Mom and began to figure out how to create a geometric snowflake shape around the word.

I am not the most math gifted person, so I had to fudge things a tiny bit near the end, but soon the snowflake shape was designed for me to cut out.

I added a holly button to the front, some braid and beads to catch the lights from the tree.

Then I made my own cording for the top...

and hung it on the tree for the ornament exchange!!

During the weekend,  I also spend time knitting on Bethany’s scarf and raving about Yarn Harlot ’s pattern to people, stitching on 3 projects a little at a time, chatting with folk and not thinking much about any day to day things like cooking, laundry etc.

Erin texted me from the volleyball tournament in Saint John during the day.  They finished in 5th and she has some incredible new bruises from diving across the floor, but it was an odd tournament with 11 teams, so it came down to the win/loss ratio and the missed the playoffs by one more point scored against them than the other team.  Instead of being upset, she is already talking about the 16U tournament next weekend!

This morning, we all woke up fairly early, determined to cram in as much stitching as possible before we all had to head back to reality.  After a short worship service, I worked on an ornament for my step-dad for Christmas. It’s a beaded mandolin from Mill Hill and I think that once all the beads are on it will be incredible!

Mom worked on a little mouse ornament for most of the weekend...

and she managed to take a picture of me stitching too!

After lunch, we had our ornament exchange and I got a beautiful ornament that I will have to take a picture of soon.

We also raffled off 3 baskets of pink donated items and I added in tickets on the models for Wings of Courage and the pillow model from Dancing Dragons.  In all, we raised about $370 for the fight against Breast Cancer... not bad for a small group of determined, passionate stitchers.

All too soon we were saying our goodbyes, hugging and planning for the next retreat!

A Fork in the Road...

Today was a wonderful birthday... I got to go play at a fabulous local wool shop today! Heidi not only spins and dyes fibers in the nummiest colours I have ever seen, she also creates incredible images with them. A few of her felted pieces were hanging on display and it was all I could do not to reach up and touch them! She has them hung out of the reach of most people, but I was wearing my 3 inch heels today and had to remind myself over and over “look but don’t touch!” Of course that advice did NOT apply to the yarn I was intent on buying. Best of all, my Mom bought these for me as a birthday present! Wheeee!

Dragon Musings will still remain as a place to blog about what is going on in my life, thoughts about stitching and everything I have always mused about, but today also marks the beginning of 2 new adventures and 2 new blogs if you care to follow me down either path.

Doodling Dragons is my new illustrator blog that will be linked to my illustration site as soon as I get all my September updates sent over. As I try to get the attention of children’s book publishers, editors and agents, it helps to have a more focussed message about that particular area of my life that includes doodles and drawings on a regular basis rather than the variety of images I tend to share here.

Inhaling Creativity is a 365 day adventure that begins today about finding more ways to be creative in everything you do so that it is as natural as breathing. For the next year, I am going to be posting about things to get inspired about and then put into practice. I’m not exactly sure where this will lead, but many explorers weren’t sure where they would end up either.

So now you have 3 blogs to follow with one crazy person if you choose. May you find a thread you like to follow...