As a stitching seminar virgin, I was a bit apprehensive but extremely excited to be going to my first one in Atlanta.
After a leisurely slightly more than 3 hour drive, we arrived at the hotel. After checking in, encumbered with all my stuff, I toddled over to the seminar registration desk ... in addition to seminar packet and name tag, I got a goody bag chock full of the things.
Went up to my room, quickly scanned the seminar information and headed back down to the 'boutique' and bookstore to shop. I also went through the traveling exhibit and was thoroughly awed by the work. Trundled back up to my room to dump my newly acquired items and because I was so antsy, went back downstairs. Ran into many members of my chapter and we chatted until time to go in to dinner. I wouldn't have minded eating with strangers but it was nice to eat with them and get to know them better. Food was plentiful but standard hotel banquet food, except for the dessert -- best as I remember, it was creme brule (sp??) with fresh fruit in an almond-based pastry cup.
Thank goodness for wake up call service, otherwise I could've missed my class as I didn't set the hi-tech radio/clock gizmo right.
I took Kathy Fenchel's 2 day contemporary stumpwork, Spring in a Paper Bag (or a reasonable facsimile of that title). There were just 8 people in the class so it was held in a suite. Thank goodness the woman I sat next to had a portable light that she placed between us as the lighting was more than a bit dim.
Kathy is an excellent teacher and my classmates were terrific!!! The design, worked on congress cloth, was wonderful too. I've got a few areas to frog and need to practise the new to me and oh so very neat way to do turkey work before completing the piece. I wish I had had another pair of hands then I could've written down the many tips while continuing to stitch.
I attended the Tennessee Valley Region's birthday bash held to celebrate 25 years of Share A Stitch seminars and won a very beautiful reproduction of small sewing kit (there's a fancy schmanzy name for that thing but I've forgotten it) as a door price. Another member of my group won Jane Nichols' first stumpwork book. She was pleased to win something but said that stumpwork wasn't her thing so I persuaded her to swap ;-)
Merchandise night was mind boggling!!!!!!!!!!! Unlike CATS where cross stitch predominated, there was a tremendous variety of needlework designs, unusual threads/fibers, accessories, and other good stuff. I couldn't resist really cheap ($1-$2) bags of not so small pieces of fabric from a decorating store. I have no idea what I'll use it for or where to put it, but I'm very happy with that purchase.
My travelling companion and I were exhausted after just a little more than an hour of shopping so after a potty stop, we hopped in her car and headed north to Knoxville. I've got two laundry baskets to empty, one has dirty clothes and the other is full of new stash.