Hi, Everyone —

Today was the first day of my seminar class and it wasn’t at all what I expected.  Joan Thomasson is the very sweet lady who is teaching this class.  Our kit consists of two blank canvases and about 50 skeins of DMC and silk flosses.  WOW — every color but blue!

First off, we had to paint our canvas — we did this by painting on paper and then ironing the paper to transfer the paint to the canvas.  The paints got really bright with the heat of the iron.  One canvas was blank except for an area which we had screened from paint by pinning on a cutout of the cardinals in the tree.  On the second one, we had to trace the overall design onto the canvas before ironing the canvas.  Joan challenged us to pick the one that we then wanted to stitch.  She lost me at “paint” — not to mention “iron” or “trace” or “choose”.

Anyway, you will see by my choice of canvas, that I painted a lot of blue into the sky.  So at the first break I had to run to the store to buy some blue thread — Sue can tell you that I had nightmares about HAVING to go to the store for this class.  All true.  So — finally, after the break, we started stitching the male cardinal.  Random long and short stitches, buttonhole stitches that I hadn’t done before, and satin thread.  Now this is what you would call a nightmare in the middle of the day!  After lunch, we finished the cardinal and moved on to flowers — another new stitch — the Lazy Daisy.  My chest hurt, me head ached!  But still — I think the result turned out okay.

First Day Progress on Cardinals in the Garden

So…when Sue got back to the room, she could tell that I was feeling pretty gloomy.  We took out our SOTM since neither of us had any homework and IMMEDIATELY I felt better — this is the kind of stitching I like to do.  How therapeutic!!!

Around 6:30 we decided to walk around to find a place for dinner.  We ended up at Bistro 301 — we had tried to get a reservation there on Saturday, but the wait was a few hours long!  What a delicious meal we had tonight.  Sue had a local vegetable risotto and I had a salad with grilled chicken, brie, candied pecans, grapes, and apples.  We walked past the Fifth Third Bank on the way home.  Hmmm.

So all is well as we prepare for bedtime.

Cheers!  Rosie

After the rains of yesterday, today was clear, crisp and breezy. Being on the 19th floor we are constantly looking out the window at the river. This afternoon what do we see going upriver but a coal barge. Is it the same one as yesterday? A barge where no one will takes its offering? Who knows.

Barge Going under the Second Street Bridge

I began my Out of Africa, Zebra class with Gale Washington today. Class began with a line drawn canvas, a bag of threads that were subdivided by where on the canvas they would be used, an instruction booklet with five beautiful photos showing the different phases of stitching as well as the finished piece. We worked first on the black on the head as she said the head was the hardest part with the small sections of black separated by white. Once I got over the fear of making the wrong decision on exactly where to place each stitch, I enjoyed it. We began the florentine stitching after lunch where Gale explained what she wanted the back to look like as well as the front and why. Tomorrow we start the day with an hour of stitching on any of these sections before we learn something new. I like that idea! Plus we were told not to stitch on our piece tonight.

Zebra, after day 1

We were not happy with the Express Breakfast offerings–pre packaged bakery products, sausage in a biscuit, but no eggs! We went to the restaurant for breakfast but decided we needed to get foods for the room. Tonight before going out to dinner we stopped at the information desk to ask for a convenience store nearby. There are none! BUT we got directions for the nearest grocery store, Kroeger's, right across the river. It seemed simple enough. We take the Second Street bridge, the same one the barge is moving under, over the river onto what we think would be called a service road or access road for I-65. Fortunately, we never had to get on the highway. We made the left as directed and started looking for Kroeger's on the right. We looked and looked and looked! Just as we pulled into a service station to ask, Rosie spotted the Kroeger's sign. We got our hard boiled eggs, fruit, pop-tarts, raisins. I then went to the customer service desk for directions back as we could never have backtracked the way we came without going the wrong way on a one way road. The man behind the desk began, ran into problems and called someone else for help. A few minutes later we were on our way. Now that is customer service! As we were walking into the store I told her that we were not making this trip daily! Sue

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Hi, Everyone —

Sue has filled you in on most of our trip so far.  So I’m just going to offer some random stories.

Many of you may remember the midnight fire alarms at the seminar in Philadelphia — when Sue and I laughed ourselves silly!  Well — you guessed it — last night we had a fire alarm here in Louisville!  The voice on the loud speaker was much more calm, but never came on to announce that the crisis had passed.  We finally called the front desk to determine whether we could “resume our normal activities!”

To make it worse — twice early this morning (2 and 4 AM) — the same alarm beeps went off in our room.  At first we thought it was another fire alarm, but it sounded like the alarm was coming from my laptop.  I couldn’t find any issue with the lap top, but then I spied my cell phone and checked it.  Red Alert text messages were coming in — warning us about flash flooding in the area!    We did laugh hard at this one!  We had fallen asleep to some serious thunder storms earlier!

Oh and the kickoff of the Stanford game was awesome!

So today I visited the EGA book store while Sue was volunteering at the registration desk.  I found this wonderful fiction book called “The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen”.  It probably has nothing to do with stitching but I just couldn’t pass it up!  I bet there are quite a few Jane Austen junkies in this crowd!  (The store also carried dozens of mystery series with stitching in them — some of them even have cats, Mom!)

As Sue explained, we spent some time looking over Finca threads in the store.  Here are my colors:

Rosie’s Finca: Red, Brown, Aqua, Yellow, and Ecru

I have the greatest roommate — here’s why:  As we were standing in a very long line to check out with our threads, I lost my patience with shopping and was ready to abandon my threads and leave.  Sue volunteered to continue to stay in line and to purchase my threads for me.  We would settle up later.  I’m a slacker roommate because I took her up on the offer!

One of the things that we did was look over the offerings of classes for next year’s EGA in Phoenix.  There was a magnificent Or Nue piece with two butterflies.  The gold was couched in swirls.  It’s going to be a one day class focusing on the technique.  I wasn’t allowed to take a picture but I understand that all of next year’s class pictures will be up on the EGA website at the end of this week.  I guarantee that it will be worth your while to take a look.

Diane had mentioned that she had a friend from college, Jackie, that was a teacher of canvas work.  It appears that Jackie has a piece in next year’s EGA seminar called “Diamond Panes”.  It’s lovely and one that I circled as a possibility for Phoenix.  So please check that one out on the EGA website also!

Sue and I stitched most of the afternoon here in the room.  My goal was to get the October SOTM stitching done…I failed.  Here’s my status at the end of our Sunday stitching.

Rosie’s October SOTM Progress

Did anyone who was at Carol’s get this completed?  Sue teases that I stitch fast, but this month’s stitching was slow going!

Last and most odd:  Yesterday Sue and I watched barges loaded with coal going upriver.  This afternoon, they returned down river — STILL loaded with coal.  We figure it must have something to do with the government shutdown!

Cheers!  Rosie

Neither Rosie or I had classes today so we could pretty much do as we wished. The very heavy rain that hit Louisville made us decide not to go to the Louisville Slugger factory today. I began the day volunteering at the Registration Desk from 7:30 to 9:30. There were four of us doing that job and business was very slow! Rosie came down at 9:30 and I was finally able to escape so that we could go for a late breakfast at the Magnolia Cafe in the hotel. After breakfast we went to the bookstore and exhibit area then on to the boutique shop, my downfall! With the help of Rosie, one very knowledgeable saleswoman and two other friends who appeared on the scene for the final selection here is what I purchased.

Frankie colors, with an alternate choice

I caouldn’t decide on the “yellow” so have narrowed it down to these two. I do realize that these colors fit neither with the Michael Boren idea of what is right nor the colors of Frank Lloyd Wright, but to me they are appropriate colors for stained glass windows.

We stopped at the room displaying the classes for next year’s seminar in Phoenix and were able to find a few things that we liked, never the same classes. The resort looks beautiful and the rooms are suites with free parking and a refrigerator! Wow!

When we returned to the room, we worked on our SOTM and finished the audio book. Banquet is tonight. I know I will be too tired to write after the banquet so I am posting now.

Sue

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Rosie and I arrived at the Galt House Hotel about noon today after driving from Mendham through Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The drive was beautiful with some fall colors in Maryland and West Virginia. There was very little traffic for most of the drive making it a relaxing drive. We listened to much of an audio book on the drive. Since it was not over as we pulled into the hotel parking, we will finish it in the room.

The hotel is beautiful, but it may be Friday before the map of the layout is fully embedded in my brain. The hotel has two towers on either side of Fourth street. Our room is on the 19th floor of one tower and our classes, registration, exhibit, boutique, book store are in the other tower. Restaurants can be found in both towers. There is a walkway on the third floor which goes over the street. Our room is larger, brighter, more elegant, as well as more comfortable than the one in Anaheim this summer. Our view is of the Ohio River!!

Coal barge going upriver

We went out to lunch, don’t ask, and came back to investigate. Rosie investigated the literature in the room while I investigated the classes for next year and the boutique. What did I find in the boutique? They carry a full line of Finca!!! Hopefully tomorrow, I will be able to make some color selections for “Frankie”, a workshop that NJNA is doing in the spring of 2014. When I returned to the room, Rosie and I got out our SOTM to work on while listening to more of our book on Rosie’s computer and watching the barge on the river.

Rosie stitching away. The blurry hand is her rapid stitching!

I think that we were stitching at the same time as the group at Carol’s home was stitching!

We found a good place for dinner about two blocks from the hotel which was not a chain restaurant, had good food at reasonable prices. We have decided that we could return there again!

Tomorrow is a free day for both of us so we should have fun at the bookstore, etc. Look for more tomorrow!

Sue

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