Weekend stitching retreat

 I've had the most wonderful weekend away, it was just what I needed, stitching with friends, chatting and laughing and eating tasty food.  I mentioned before that since Christmas I haven't been stitching but I enjoyed sorting out and kitting up a new start to take with me and certainly made up for my few months stitching drought while I was away.

I decided to start my weekend on the Thursday, I spent the day in Wells and had booked a Premier Inn for the night so that on the Friday morning it was just a short drive to our hotel for the retreat.

I've visited Wells a few times, It's not a big place but has City status because of it's Cathedral, not many shops but It's nice for a wander round.  I had thought of looking around the Cathedral this time but I felt the £14 entrance fee was a little expensive plus I'd only got an hour left on my parking ticket so It wasn't really worth it, but an excuse for a visit another time.

Such an impressive building, and as you can see it was blue sky all the way on Thursday.

Wells is also home to one of the oldest residential streets left in Europe, Vicars Close.  It was built in the 14th century to house the Vicars Choral. Today it is still home to the vicars choral for the cathedral the organist and vergers.

Those chimneys are impressive arn't they

It was a thirty minute drive from the hotel in Wells to our retreat hotel so I was able to arrive nice and early on Friday to start my stitching weekend.

Our stitching room was upstairs and was perfect, big enough so that we all had space but not so big that you couldn't interact with others, plenty of light too.

There were some vendors through the weekend selling charts fabric and other stitching goodies as well as a freebie table and a destash table.  Karen and Anabelle did a fantastic job of arranging everything and looking after us all, they also hosted a smalls exchange and a raffle.  I think most of the attendees donated a raffle prize, the money raised, (£200), went to the prostate cancer charity in memory of Anabelle's step dad who sadly very recently lost his fight with prostate cancer.

I didn't take part in the smalls exchange but a good number did, there were some amazing and creative finishes.

I'd kitted up Hoot in a Boot to take with me and thoroughly enjoyed stitching again.  I had taken my  Mary Margaret stitching along in case I wanted a change but I was enjoying my new start so much that she never saw the light of day.

I avoided temptation and didn't add to my stash except for a new, larger grime guard and a chart from the de-stash table.  I think is a fairly old chart as I remember liking it years ago, and It still appeals to me.

Love the words

So that was my first weekend retreat and it won't be my last, I've put my name down for the November one :-) 

I didn't take my laptop so I'm behind on blog reading and commenting , I will catch up on your posts during the week.

-X

Oh dear, it seems I've been picked up on a spelling mistake 😂 I've corrected it now, I'll try better with the editing next time🤣