Salty Yarns Jamboree 2019

 

First, let me start by saying I wish each and every one of you could experience Jamboree at Salty Yarns. We are spoiled rotten by Sara, Sally, Mary and the Lankford gang from homemade lasagna dinners to delicious desserts to a generously stuffed goodie bag. We then have three fantastic designers teach three fabulous classes...all with the sparkling Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop. There is even a parade of cruiser style cars parading down the boardwalk each morning!!! Can it get any better??? I hope you will enjoy my recap of a fun loving weekend.

Greeting us at the entrance to the Lankford Hotel, which is the oldest hotel on the Ocean City Boardwalk, is this lovely autumn display undertaken by Mary and Brian.

Then there is the obligatory sunrise photo taken while I'm walking the boards in the morning.

 And a shot of part of the parade of cruisers...this usually lasts well over an hour.

The weekend officially starts with the lasagna dinner on Friday evening followed by  teacher introductions and some time to  mingle while enjoying appetizers, desserts and wine. There are two classes on Saturday, with a lunch break between, and one Sunday morning. The attendees are split into three smaller groups and assigned a classroom. We stay in our designated classroom and the teachers rotate between us. 

Our first class Saturday morning was with Cathy Habermann of Hands on Design. We had pre-stitched three Halloween designs and learned how to finish a shaped flat ornament in class. Here is the one I managed to get done in class....just about everyone had a finish! Cathy is a great designer AND finisher and her step by step instructions, with photos, made the finishing so easy.
 

 


 My Saturday afternoon class was with Vickie LoPiccolo Jennett of Needlework Press. We started a scissor pocket that was made using motifs from an antique sampler by Sarah Barker. We also got a chart of the sampler. Vickie is very knowledgeable about antique samplers and this project is precious.

My last class on Sunday was so much fun!!! Janice Note of Noteworthy Needle had drilled us all pumpkins to stitch.....quite an undertaking as I think, if I remember correctly, she drilled approximately 42,000 holes for all of our pumpkins. I was determined to get mine done, as well as a number of other stitchers, in the lobby Sunday night. We cheered each other on as one after the other completed the project. Here is mine:

 
And here are the ladies:
 

Photo courtesy of Bernadette Matthews

The leaves go all around the pumpkin in fall colors. It was tough pulling that needle through the shared holes, even using a needle grabber, and I do have to admit to sore fingers by the time I was through. Sometimes we must suffer for our art, but none as much as Janice. She accidentally cut her wrist with an exacto knife Saturday night while cutting off the top of a pumpkin and had quite a scare!!! Thankfully, she didn't need stitches and, having a great sense of humor, was able to laugh about it the next morning. This will go down as a legend now....in tales of Jamboree!!!

Now on to acquisitions...first up is our goodie bag! It all came in the bag that says 'Random Crap" though I wouldn't refer to any of the contents that way! 😉

Next are the kits we received that were designed by Sally .......there was a choice between two .....but aren't they both adorable.... and all materials were included. The ribbons go on as a band around the tin box for this one.

And this one had wasabi tape around it.

Then there was the stash enhancement.....

I tried to keep my purchases to a minimum since I'll be going back to Salty Yarns in less than two weeks for the annual CA Wells weekend. If you don't know the back story, this is it in a nutshell....  CA  cancelled out, at the last minute,  on a class weekend about 12 or so years ago, but the ladies still got together to stitch and had a "wake" in CA's absence. They continue to do this every year and since I was signed up for those original classes, I try to go when I can. 

Well, that's all she wrote for this blog edition. Thanks for stopping by and your "twisted threads" of friendship!

Stasi

Coasting into Fall.......

 

Greetings fellow stitchers....I hope you are enjoying some beautiful autumn weather! We are finally experiencing some fall temps after dealing with a couple days that hit 100 last week!!! I am so happy to be in my jeans...I may even have to put a sweater on when I go out later. Speaking of sweaters, check out this adorable chart I stumbled across...I think on IG...but you can't hold me to it. Sweater Weather is an adorable chart by a new to me designer, October House. I am hoping to incorporate an old sweater of mine in the finishing....stay tuned!!!

I have some stitching to share, all of which is waiting to be FFO'd. First up is Miles from A Pair of Pilgrims by Lizzie Kate. I'm doing this on a 28 count mystery fabric, over two, with called for fibers...a mix of GAST, WDW and Anchor.

 Next is Stitching by the Sea by C A Wells. I had done this for a friend years ago and have been trying to get another one stitched for me. I used a 28 count mystery R&R fabric, a very pale blue, and the fibers (silks) provided in the kit; I happened to have enough left over from my first one. 

Next, is the Bee Pinball by Carriage House Samplings. This is full coverage on a 36 count mystery linen ( do you see a pattern forming here?). I substituted fibers and used  different threads for the front and back backgrounds. I used Gloriana Spanish Moss for the hive side and NPI 335 for the bees side. 

Last but not least, I got on the Halloween band wagon and did a couple of the small motifs from Brenda Gervais's Time for Halloween. I pretty much used the called for threads but sometimes substituted leftover threads from kits, since not much was needed. The pumpkin was stitched on a 40 count...yet again..mystery linen. The cat was done on some gingham ribbon I found at JoAnns, which turned out to be 40 count. I'm working on a third and will share that next time hopefully along with a finish on the pair shown here.

Ribbon from JoAnns--orange and brown

 To end, I'm going to share a couple photos from my reunions this past weekend. Yes, I had two reunions on Sunday...a when it rains, it pours scenario! But I managed to get to and enjoy myself tremendously at both. The first was a Codd family reunion, my Dad's side of the family. He was one of seven children and all branches were represented. There were about 150 people there which made for a lot of mingling and I tried my best to speak to all my cousins, aunts and uncles but had to leave early to get to my next event. (I was already losing my voice by the end of those 3 hours) This is what my daughter posted on FB:

“Legacy is not leaving something FOR people, it’s leaving something IN people.”
These two are legacy-builders! ❤️

 Next was a reunion of my grade school classmates..we had 17 out of 47 that were found and could make it. What a blast!!! I hadn't seen most of these people in 50+ years....but the years faded away and we were remembering, catching up, laughing, and making new memories...what a special night!!! Sadly we were all so excited we forgot to take a picture until after some people had left, but here is a shot of those still there....not too shabby for a bunch of 67 year olds!!! And yes, the voice was SHOT by the end of the night!!!

Well, Thursday I am off to OCMD for Jamboree at Salty Yarns. We will be having three teachers..Hands on Design, Needlework Press and Noteworthy Needle. Hopefully I'll have some finished pieces to share next time and, of course, some stash enhancement.

Until then, thanks for stopping by and your "twisted threads" of friendship!

Stasi

Back from Our Trip and Adjusting to Reality......

Let me start off by saying we had a fabulous trip out west where beauty abounds everywhere you look...if you ever get the opportunity...take it!!! 

Just a heads up.....this will mainly be a recap of our trip with a bit of stitching news at the end. We flew in and out of Denver and did a BIG circle (over 1900 miles) in a rental (which caused us some anxiety as we noticed a couple hundred miles in we were driving on expired tags). We started our trip with a stop in Pinedale, WY, a cute little town that was very artsy...wish we'd had more time to spend there. Here are some flowers outside the restaurant we ate lunch in. The flowers everywhere were bright and luscious! Later I found that this was due to the altitude and a more intense heat from the sun.

 The next day we hit Jackson, WY, but we didn't hang there too long; we were anxious to get to our next stop, Dornan's Ranch, a little bit north of Jackson with the Grand Tetons in our backyard, so to speak.

Grand Tetons

Here's our little cabin at Dornan's:

 This was my favorite place we stayed--2 bedrooms, one bath, full kitchen and living/dining area right on the Snake River. We hiked....

 

We biked.....
 

 

and we floated.....








...for two days (Rich and I want to return there for a week at some point). We also saw our first wildlife there outside Jackson.

Mama and baby moose

Then we were off to Yellowstone for three days. Here we witnessed Old Faithful blow three times.....

 saw tons of geysers, hot springs and mud pots....it's kind of other wordly there..

We toured one evening in this vintage yellow touring car....

 
and had a tour of the Old Faithful Inn....this place is magnificent...very rustic but wonderful architectural design. (Sadly, we could not get reservations there but were in a nearby cabin).

Roof of Old Faithful Inn with stairs leading to roof on the outside

Interior shot of the Inn's lobby....gives you an idea of it's immensity and height

Rich and I by the HUGE fireplace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We saw a bison by the side of the road

A beautiful rainbow

So, I have to tell you a little story about the rainbow. The wife in the couple we went with and I have been friends since grade school. She had traveled across country for 8 weeks the summer of 1976 with another good friend of ours ( I was married and working at the time, so couldn't go). Sadly, that friend of ours passed away in 2002 but we felt we were getting messages from her the whole time we were there....things like the rainbow, a Beatles song (we were all big Beatles fans), a Let it Be medallion in a room we stayed in, etc.. It was good to feel her presence!

But perhaps, my favorite thing in Yellowstone was the Grand Prismatic. We were able to hike up to a fairly new overlook and see it from above. The colors around the edge are caused by bacteria...unbelievable!!!

Are you still with me??? I know it's a lot, but I'm trying to get it done in one sitting. Next we drove to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone....not to be confused with the Grand Canyon in Arizona..but imposing nonetheless.

  
We switched to the Yellowstone Lakehouse, where we also stayed in a cute little cabin. We saw more wildlife, hiked and relaxed a bit in the lobby of the main hotel.

Lazy bison?

Elk

From there it was on to Cody, WY ,via the Beartooth Highway, where we stayed two nights in a cute little Airbnb two blocks from the main drag. Here we visited the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Now, I have to say, we didn't know what to expect here, but this is a first class museum, associated with the Smithsonian, and it was fabulous!!!

But perhaps the best part was I got to meet a fellow stitcher!!! Greta and I had "met" during the Common Threaded Stitcher month on IG and I knew she worked at the Center. I took a chance she was there that day ....and she was!!! We only got to visit for a bit, but we both felt we could have talked for hours...it was so nice to meet in person. And, Greta's husband is the director of the Heart Mountain museum which we visited the next day. Another top notch exhibit, though very sobering. This is the site of a former Japanese internment camp, just a few miles out of Cody....so hard to believe this happened in the US to US citizens....to be honest, we were all a bit shocked!!! 

We attended a dinner and cowboy revue in the evening that was a lot of fun!

From Cody, we drove to Buffalo, WY where we spent the night at the Occidental Hotel, supposedly the most haunted hotel in WY. On the way there we hit snow at the higher elevations....luckily not enough to slow us down.

Here's an outside shot of the hotel, an old brothel where the likes of Butch Cassidy, Calamity Jane and President Theodore Roosevelt stayed. There was a car enthusiast group staying there (Austin Healys) hence the cars in the photo.

Here's some shots of our room that had lots of lovely doilies protecting the furniture.

That's a hand painted mural along the top of the wall

The little "Let it Be" medallion I mentioned earlier is resting on that old iron

Now for any Longmire fans out there....The fictional town of Durant, in the Longmire series, is based on Buffalo, WY. The author, Craig Johnson, lives nearby and was actually in the restaurant where we were eating dinner. A number of stores have adopted Durant in their window displays. Sadly, we left early and didn't have time to wander the town, but did get to eat breakfast at the Busy Bee Cafe.

We brought one one of those mugs!!!

From here, we were on to our last stop...Mount Rushmore...a great place to end our trip. It was a little cold and windy but ice cream was had since it's based on a recipe from Thomas Jefferson.

 Now all that was left was finding a hotel for the night and starting our drive the next morning back to Denver for our flight home. Even though this recap was long, there was still a lot I didn't cover. So, if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an e-mail or comment on the post and I'll get back to you.

Now some stitching.....sorry....I'm having gum surgery Friday and trying to get this all out of the way. I had great intentions of finishing ALL the background stitching on my Year of Celebration pieces....but....I only got two done. The roads were either two twisty or I didn't want to miss what was outside the car.

This was as far as I got on the Pilgrim I shared last post:

So, not much stitching went on...but I did come home to some stitchy mail. First, I had ordered this project bag kit from Brenda Gervais. The fabrics are pre-printed and you just have to sew together.

 Then, I had bought three Need'L Love stocking charts on FB right before I left on vacation.

And last, but not least, our friend Vickie sent me this adorable chart...and yes, it has a bee! Thanks so much, Vickie!

 
So, I think I'm outta gas but hope you enjoyed!!! Thanks for stopping by and your "twisted threads" of friendship!

Stasi