After a wonderful weekend at Lake Arrowhead at Rosie's brother's “cabin” with no stitching, but total relaxation with good food, clean air, cool nighttime temperatures, and lots of reading, Rosie and I went to a meeting of our west coast chapter, SBANG, last night.

For those of you who are long distance members as we are, you know that at each meeting there are three door prizes to be won. You guessed it, I won AGAIN!

Tropical Santas on perforated paper

How appropriate for Southern California. Now who should I stitch them for?

We were made to feel so welcome as we're the other out of towners who had come to seminar and stayed over for the meeting and another workshop. I think Rosie will be telling you about some ideas that they do which we might like to try at our chapter.

The program last night was a one day piece by east coaster, Sue Reed, called Journey.

Sue Reed's Design and Kit

In a little over an hour she fed us with many hints, went through the stitches and demonstrated several she thought important for,us to see in person. We all agreed that she is an excellent teacher. You would never know that she had taught a two day workshop on Sunday and Monday which followed the week long seminar with only Wednesday free of any teaching! She was patient and thorough! I asked her to sign my copy and she even took time to write a note. By this time of the morning, 7:30, she is now on her way home to Peabody, MA. This has been a great “journey” for me!

Sue

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Today Rosie and I completed our classes for this, our second, seminar. Hot Pot was a fun piece to stitch and one I anticipate finishing. It was a learning experience for me as I had to compensate not for a straight edge, but for a CURVE, not my favorite thing! And more than one curve as you can see.

Hot Pot, day 2

I feel comfortable about finishing this piece on my own and I would definitely take a class from Dawn Donnelly again.

This evening was the closing banquet. Rosie and I sat with a group that included members from the Kansas City chapter, both current and former, including a teacher, Toni Gerdes, as well as Ann Carol, who we met last year at seminar. It was a good table that included us in their conversations. Dinner was fine with an awesome chocolate dessert–no menu was included so I have no clue what it was. Then came the announcements, opportunity basket winners, and awards. They also told us the money that was made during the seminar for ANG which included $77,000 from the two auctions, silent and live. The online bidding really boosted the results according to one insider I spoke with. The opportunity baskets raised over $4,000. At the opening banquet we were told a out an initiative to raise money for the Golden Threads for the celebration of ANG's fifty anniversary. At this seminar they raised $100,001 towards this foundation. You can see there is some wealth among the needlepointers!

The committee co chairs for Chicago in 2014 made an excellent PowerPoint presentation selling us on Chicago, what the city has to offer from museums to parks to music to needlework shops to food. It was amazing. That plus the classes being offered make me want to attend in August, 2014!

Hope you have enjoyed our view of the seminar for this year and hope that there will be more attendees from NJNA next year in Chicago!

Goodby for this seminar! Sue

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I began the second class today which is much more relaxing than the last class as it is not all new and different. My main challenge in this class is stitching inside the lines, or deciding where the lines are and how to keep those curves smooth. The teacher, Dawn Donnelly, designed this after looking at the polymer clay covered decorative tea pots. So as you can imagine the colors are bright, but not sharp, if that makes sense. Threads are perle, floss, Splendor and Needlepoint Silk. Some class members were saying that they would like bling added and were thinking of ways to add some bling, but I think the piece is cheerful as it is and the colors do remind me of the polymer clay.

Hot Pot with a few colors

After class today I had volunteered to work in the exhibit area, wearing white gloves and all! What I did was watch to see that no one was misbehaving–touching anything on display–offer to lift or hold something for someone, open a booklet, turn over a piece, etc. there was also a flashlight a available to allow someone to see inside a box or details of a piece. While I was there, a woman asked one of the other volunteers to hold a Christams stocking upright so she could view it from a distance. She told us that she had been a judge at the Philadelphia Seminar (I think it was there) and was looking to make her selection for viewer's favorite. She showed us some of the techniques the stitcher used to create the picture she wanted on the stocking. It was interesting watching her evaluate pieces. There was a small piece of a picaninny in a field in the south. She showed me how the mat in the framing was cut with the bevel going in rather than out so that there was no white showing. It was obvious when she pointed it out that white would have detracted from the piece. The little girl's face was surrounded with a circle of French knots that were larger than usual made with a heavier thread to look like the ends of the corn rows in her hair. I learned quite a bit from her! When I left the exhibit area, she was sitting outside in the open stitching area and we talked about her class which was a notebook class using colored threads on blocks of color painted on a canvas and seeing how the appearance changes with the color behind the thread. It was a good use of color theory that even I might be able to retain if I took that class!

After supper tonight, we went to Expo! For those inexperienced it is a room filled with tables of people selling things to needleworkers which can run from painted canvases to accessories to designs, kits, and even jewelry and then the entrance of hordes of women who want to buy! Rosie and I arrived about half an hour into the frenzy and it was still booming! I did buy a few things.

Directions for Ort with a Twist and stitched buttons

As you may be aware, Rosie is the picture taker between us. She has been taking the pictures after each day of class and then editing them while I watched. Yesterday I asked her if she had a special program for the editing. She told me that I could do the same thing with my iPad and she had me try it. I can! So today I took my class photo and did the editing! By the time we got back from the Expo, the room was too dark to take a good photo with the iPad so Rosie was back at work. Thanks, Rosie!

Sue

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Since we did not need to be in class today by 8:30, we saw the lobby from our room at 9:00 when the sun was coming in the wall of window behind the registration desk. You can see it on yesterday's blog as we added it to the description I wrote.

Before the tour, we went down to see if either of us had won a door prize. I won my second door prize today! (The first, on Monday, I handed back in when I saw that the design called for 15 spools of Kreinik plus additional threads!). Today I found a cross stitch prize that was worth taking. It has the design as well as fabric and thread.

Lori Birmingham design

We left on our tour of the mission in San Juan Capistrano about 9:30. Rosie will be describing much of what we saw. The Native American women who worked for the padres were responsible for food preparation and one of the foods they prepared was based on acorns. After shelling the acorns–how do they do that?–they would grind it to a powder by grinding one rock over another. The friction created cups in the rocks. The women all gathered around the one rock to work, and what do women who have gathered do? They talk! Thus the name of the rock.

Gossip Rock

After a delicious lunch (see Rosie's blog), we returned to the hotel. I spent some time in the exhibit hall and this year voted for my favorite, a piece by Liz Morrow, called Leaping Stag in the professional original category.

Tonight was Teacher's Showcase. Rosie and I decided we would check it out and see if any of the east coast teachers had potential workshops for our chapter at some time in the future. We went into the room and were shocked to see the mass of women trying to see what was displayed by each teacher.

Teacher's Showcase

We picked up flyers and business cards from all of them even the woman from Tasmania, Australia! There were so many things that we thought some members would enjoy. The next step for those on the west coast or in the middle of the country is to see if we can find other chapters in a near by area who would be interested in a workshop with that teacher. So many choices!

Did I pick up a needle today? Yes, I wanted to wrap and secure the “plunged” gold threads from yesterday and I did. Now I need not worry about them moving on me before I work on this project again. Tomorrow is another project!

Sue

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Thought you might like to hear about our hotel room which is on the fifth floor and overlooks the lobby and restaurant with a huge glass wall at the back of the lobby–so we do see outside.

A Room with a View!

We can pick out our room from the lobby because Rosie’s backpack is on the ledge. That is a good thing as we could have used it to store our crackers and cookies! There was one chair which is a not very comfortable desk chair. When we heard that others had we requested a second chair, Rosie called and asked for another chair so now we have a banquet chair as well–perfect for stitching. Now if there was only enough light to stitch. There are two lamps in the room, a high intensity desk lamp and a lamp between the two beds. There is no ceiling lamp in the room, so it is good that the open stitching areas are large and the hotel did move some more lights into that area to help out. There are some good things as well, we got a refrigerator so breakfast is in the room–and with tea at $4 a cup, it is a good thing! There is adequate drawer space for all that we brought with us, the beds are comfortable and the service is good. So we are happy.

There was quite a bit left to do for day three of my class,but we managed to get quite a bit accomplished. The teacher, Valerie McAleenan, is very patient, but I don’t think she is accustomed to teaching a large group so that most often she is going around to tables to explain what to do next. She would start in the front left and work,around the room, I was front right and she would often get waylaid before reaching our table. Neither my tablemate nor I was hesitant about calling her attention to us to see and learn! Today we were supposed to take the layed gold threads that met at an intersection and weave them. I tried, I really did, but eventually my gold threads were becoming pretty ratty. She had given us an alternative pattern that I did in the corners and am quite happy with it, especially compared with some of the finished knots that I saw. The last thing we did was to appliqué felt circle padding and then metallic kid with an overcast gold thread around the outside with needle weaving through the gold. That needle weaving was the hardest thing of all for me as it took forever to “see” the pattern! I did get it as you can see from the picture!

Final Day of Lapis Gold

Tomorrow is the tour! See you then!

Sue

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I am combining two days of classes because last night when we got back from dinner, I had to wrap the Leah skein of #12 over dyed perle onto a soft roll of paper that I had made. I spent an hour working on it last night and another hour this morning when I got up. I couldn't not complete the wrapping without cutting it a couple of times because it got so tangled. When I started and held the open skein at one end and let go, it twisted right back up which explains why it was so difficult to wrap! So by the time I had put in my hour of wrapping, I was too tired (and frustrated) to write!

The class and the project are both going well, except that we have quite a bit left to do tomorrow, the last day. Day 1 was spent doing quite a bit of basting which you might think should/could have been prework, but the teacher, a first timer, felt there could be too many questions/mistakes. I think she was right. We did get a few things stitched as you can see from the picture.

End of first day

Day 2 began with plunging the gold threads to the back and wrapping them. What an experience! She gave us the option of using out $10 Japan needle or a plastic dental loop. I chose the dental loop as I was afraid the needle would fall off and I would lose it! It worked great to pull the gold to the back. The wrapping takes practice–I got pretty good and much faster with the ones I did tonight for homework! Then we needed to do 36 queen stitches so that we could be ready for the fan, or as she said “the fan” scaring us all. Then came laying the gold alongside the fan to be couched. Before we knew it four-thirty arrived and we had to be ready to do the next part tomorrow and most of us were not, hence homework.

The only thing I have left to do before class starts is to lay the three sets of gold and couch them along the top. If you are wondering why I am not doing it tonight, it is because there is no surface to work on besides the bed, so I plan to go early tomorrow and complete that before class starts.

I did look at the classes for next year and found several that I really like! Susan has two beautiful pieces on it, including a two day class. Chicago should be a great seminar city! I spent a small amount of time in the exhibits and again was impressed with someof the pieces. One was interesting with a great story behind it. It was a needlepoint piece of two sides of the brain, a healthy brain and one that had been attacked by Alzheimer's. A woman whose husband had Alzheimer's so the x-ray in a magazine and thought that designing a needlepoint piece and stitching it might help her with dealing with her husband's illness. She contacted the magazine which put her in touch with the man who had submitted the x-ray. She e-mailed him asking permission to use it for a design. In under ten minutes he not only gave her permission but also melded the two x-rays of the healthy and the diseased brain into one image with one side healthy and the other diseased. During the time that she was stitching it, her husband passed, but she did complete it. I was impressed with her way of dealing with what was happening and using it to find some comfort.

Look for more tomorrow!

Sue

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Last night when I was showing Rosie the threads that I had purchased this week for my Holiday Patches which is not going to be holiday related, I realized that I had missed the four colors of Silk &Ivory! So today I went to the seminar shop, Needlepoints, Ltd., and asked if I could bring in the threads I already had and have help in selecting the appropriate colors from Silk & Ivory. Since it was not busy, there was a saleswoman who spent time with me selecting the right colors.

Threads with Fabric Patches

What do you think of the colors with the fabric?

Sue

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