Shipshewana

This meeting saw the largest gathering (ever?), for the Dear Jane Retreat with 122 attendees not only from the USA, but from Canada, Australia, Norway, Germany(via Norway), Belgium and of course me from the UK - we were truly an international meet!

With Elaine's excellent organisation skills, 122 people in the sewing room at one time did not feel like the tight squeeze that I feared (I am very uncomfortable in large crowds), and the time passed so quickly with the stitching, chatting to old friends and new, eating and of course all the shopping including a 3 hour visit to the ubiquitous boat in the basement of Lollys.

Here's Theresa, Gay, Myself and Carla taking a breather from searching the boat!
Picture by Claire

Five of us spent 3 hours turning the contents of that boat over and over, there were some wonderful treasures in there, believe me!

Rosemary Youngs gave a special retrospective presentation of some of her quilts - apologies for some of the photographs...

And then of course there was the Show n' Tell on Friday night...
We had a number of "Goddess's" present - you are crowned a goddess when you complete your Dear Jane Quilt. Here are a few of them...

Caroline Van Maele - Belgium

Barbara Larson and her 2" block Dear Jane Quilt

Trudi Wells from New York - This was a truly emotional moment, I have been watching Trudi make her quilt for 9 years - there's hope for me one day!

Nancy King - Indianapolis

Rosemary Youngs becomes a Dear Jane Goddess!

Made by Nancy King

Patty Harris and her Just Take 2 Quilt

Patty and Prue made the same quilt, but in different colourways

Prue's Just Take 2 Quilt

Edith Shanholt's Phebe Quilt - close-up of centre

Edith Shanholt's Phebe Quilt

Each November, in the wee small hours of Saturday morning the animals, led by Timothy get up to tricks. But this year...Timothy (the leader of the pack) had been forgotten back home in Indianapolis and the animals were not happy! 

                                      

                                      

Pam, Timothy's owner, was not allowed to forget that she had forgotten him and had to sit opposite this to remind her of this fact!

After all the wild weather of the previous weekend, snow began to fall - cue, one very excited Brit!

One more post to come!

Have a good stitching day!

I'm baaack...!

So where did October and November go???

I cannot believe that I missed out on October and November. Work certainly kept me very busy with some long days and as a result I did not have a lot to show for my stitching in October which I found very frustrating. And, November? Well, I went off on what my boss calls my "annual pilgrimage" to the USA - more about that later...

Poland

I had planned to do quite a bit of stitching in Poland, but a. I was exhausted each evening b. I didn't have a comfortable chair in my hotel room to sit on and stitch and c. my Polish hosts were incredibly generous and kept me busy most evenings including a personal night time tour of Warsaw, when I got to visit the home of my childhood heroine - Marie Curie's childhood home - here I am outside the house...



Marie Curie's childhood home

Decorated entrance to a restaurant in the old town

One of the Amber shops in the old town - I looked but could not afford to buy!

Of course, I had to eat as well!!

I had had no idea of how badly damaged Warsaw had been during World War II. Most if not all of the old city, much of which was medieval, was bombed by Hitler and so what you see today is a reconstruction. Then of course came Stalin and the communists, but over the last 20 years there has been much building of very modern offices.

Old City Square

Look - Marks and Spencers. I even saw the odd Tesco's bag!

One of the new office blocks

A smart shopping street

The Josef Piludski University for Physical Education where I taught

I greatly enjoyed my first trip to Warsaw and the students were enthusiastic and if nothing else came to have a greater appreciation of how the environment impacts on people's ability to interact and participate and the managers of the both the student union's bar and local hotel certainly got a lesson on universal design especially in relation to wheelchair users!!