Class, Purchases, etc.

First, I took Carole Lake's Painted Canvas Workshop: A Gallery of Ideas for Stitching for four days. It was a fantastic class! I highly recommend taking it if you are interested in expanding your canvas enhancement abilities. Carole led a group of twenty of us with two of our canvases in group discussions and brain storming ideas to get them out of our closets and onto the walls or wherever they belong. It was not a class where Carole writes a stitch guide for you, but you all work together and come up with ideas, stitches and threads. There was a large variety of canvas with all kinds of creative ideas to stitch them. Carole was an excellent enabler as well as educator and has a great sense of humor to boot! I will talk more about my canvas and how I will stitch them at a later date.
Second, the photo shows what I purchased. There was a wonderful boutique run by Barbara Jackson and her wonderful helpers. If you needed threads or additional ones, during our class you went to the Boutique and Leigh helped you pick them out! My canvas came with the threads and we will discuss those later also. There was also a bookstore by Ruth Kern and there I picked up the long skinny book called Categories for Needlepoint Stitches, The Midas Touch, and Embroidered Flora and Fauna. In the boutique, I purchased the Vineyard Shimmer Black, Micro Ice in black,the SJ Designs star beads and two Pearsall silks in grey. The Vineyard silk and Micro Ice are for a DeeBee's design in the stash. The beads were because they are cute, and the Pearsall's I thought I might use on the purse flap. At Merchandise night on Tuesday, I picked up Marnie Ritter's Aurora Revisited kit and the four pieces of Ultrasuede in the foreground.
Last, it was a fun filled busy week. On Sunday, after check in both the boutique, book store and exhibit were open and then there was the faculty showcase followed by a wine and cheese reception and dinner. Monday classes started. Tuesday night was Merchandise night and Thursday night was the closing banquet.
There are several restaurants available but mostly we ate our meals in the Plant Room restaurant which was a buffet for every meal. Breakfast and lunch also had a specialty island with omelettes for breakfast and different things like hot Caesar salads made while you waited. The service was excellent. Breakfast items included cereals-hot and cold, eggs, meats, breads and rolls, fruit. Lunches were salads, sandwiches, hot main entrees and veggies, cookies, fruits and brownies for dessert. Dinners were salads, hot veggies, hot entrees, and pies, cakes etc for desserts. Soups were available at lunch and dinner. Every meal also has coffee, tea, juice etc. The wait staff were all friendly and all meals were on china, and provided linen napkins. Pretty first class in my opinion!
I hope you all get a chance to go and get really spoiled for several days!