Hoosier Retreat 2016

A couple weeks ago, I made the 7.5 hour trip to Camp Riverdale in Mitchell, Indiana to spend several days with the Hoosier ladies. 

I spent three days stitching on JG and made a bunch of progress.  Here's what it looked like at the start of the retreat.

 My goal was to finish the 6 o'clock branches.  Tada!

I also finished the left and right bridges, the blue border, and started the gold metallic.  Woo Hoo!

These are the orts that resulted from my retreat weekend:

Not only did the camp cook our meals, we all brought snacks. We were never without food!

Everyone also brought items for the Show & Tell table.  Wow, a bunch of talented stitchers...

Somehow, two charts from the freebie table found their way into my hands. I don't know how that happens.

Fancy Works set up a "shop" table.  It was so hard to resist.  I ended up purchasing some small pieces of fabric and Liberty by Heart in Hand.  If you ever get a chance to visit Fancy Works, I highly recommend it. The shop owners are awesome.

 

Fancy Works also provided a goodie bag for every attendee.  Thanks, ladies!

These were the Mystery Boxes that stitchers brought.  It's a volunteer exchange that's similar to "Dirty Santa".  I didn't participate, but it was a lot of fun watching packages being stolen and seeing what was in each one.

Deborah exclaimed, "Oh, $100 worth of edible panties!" after looking in the Victoria's Secret bag. LOL

We experienced several types of weather during the few days we were at stitch camp (term coined by Jodi -- loved meeting you!).  The first day it rained and sleeted. The next morning, I woke to a marvelous sunrise.

The day I drove home, it rained... and rained... and rained.

Salt Fork Rest Area is one of the more beautiful rest stops along the interstate in Illinois.  It has walking paths, picnic areas, a pond, as well as the usual restrooms/vending machine building.  I took advantage of this photo op:

There were a couple of takeaways from this retreat:

•  "Head down, Shut Up, and Stitch!"  We all thought this would make a great tshirt. - Thanks Vonna for the phrase.  It was great spending the weekend with you!

•  Did you know there is a Hoosier Stitcher Sisters signal to be able to signal to other Hoosiers in a crowd? It's like a secret handshake.    I'll just say that involves using your hands to pretend to jiggle the girls. LOL  Thank you Nancy for enlightening us all.

This was my second time going to this retreat.  Reuniting with some and meeting new stitchers was awesome.  We all had a great time laughing, eating, and stitching.