Retreat...Final Chapter at last!

It's a stormy day here in the Heartland.  Kallie is a complete mess, my water heater is leaking and when the guy came out this morning to service the air conditioner for summer he informed me I don't have a damper on my humidifier so my system is not running efficiently.  Hmmm...I had one before you all replaced my furnace last fall.  I called the office and they are coming out free of charge to take care of that... in 2 weeks.  My tater's are torked for sure!  Geez people, if a person has one when you start a job said person should have one when you finish the job! Am now waiting on a plumber to arrive so thought this would be a most excellent time to finish this epic story!

Sunday Morning when we sat down in our stitching spot we found one of these waiting for us.

"The Sister's" as we like to call them made each of us a Needlebook!

See the cute feet fabric they found?   Love it!

Thank you  Denise, Deb C. and Connie N.,  that was a very nice thing to do and everyone loved them!

Sunday was a pretty laid back day, most everyone was feeling the effects of little sleep and moaning about how quickly the weekend went.   We did manage to get everyone together for a group photo

and then one by one the ladies started packing up in preparation for the trip home.

Some had to take a quick nap before they hit the road though, and I heard through the grapevine that some pulled over and took a nap while on their way home.

It's always sad when one of our retreats is over.  We always have a wonderful time and the ladies are always fun to be around.  Lucky for us it's only 4 months until our Fall No Frills Retreat!  We're going to do a Halloween ornament or pin pillow exchange this year which should be fun.  Just need to decide on a chart and get going on it so I don't leave it till the last minute.

A great big THANK YOU to all of our Retreater's, old timers and newbies alike,  for coming out and being the great ladies you are.  We couldn't ask for a better group of people. See ya in the Fall or next Spring if not before!!

To wrap this up I have some pictures of my finished Retreat Project which is slightly different than it was charted.  You know me, I can't leave well enough alone.  I didn't change a lot though, left out a motif, changed a color here and there and I used over dyes on mine.  

Here is the model as charted that I showed earlier:

and here is mine.  It's hard to spot the differences.

I made some stick pins to put in my footstool and Connie liked them so much she wanted a set and thought I should make a few sets to sell which I did.  I put a heart charm and feet charm on the larger pin.  

 I had a finish right before retreat.  You might have spotted it on the brag table.

stitched on 32ct Meadow Rue over one with a tent stitch

While I was at retreat I worked on a couple of older projects.  First up is Tuscan Rose before retreat.  I last showed an update in April of 2012 so it had been a year since I touched it.

 and after retreat:

I also worked on my Peace Sampler.  The last picture I could find looked like this:

It now looks like this:

And with that this epic Retreat post comes to a close.  Thanks for hanging in there folks!

Update on the water heater.  Need a new one.  Not an inexpensive item.  Oh well,  gotta have hot water right?

Take care till next time!

Julie