Springhouse Retreat - Day One

Well, this is my first blog on the new computer. All is good—I'm connected to the Wi-Fi at the retreat house. What is impressive—well, not really—is that everything is FAST!!! My goal will be to keep the crap out of the memory and the storage to keep it fast! 

By the way, we are at the Springhouse Retreat in New Hamburg. It's a great place to sew! I got a chuckle when I went to bed. Some people have mentioned that my bedroom is cold, so imagine my surprise when I saw winter-themed flannel sheets on the bed! With my fleece PJs, I was toasty warm all night long! 

Here's an update on the package. When walking Murphy, I stopped to check the address. OK, so it was on the right street, but it was still sitting there. After packing all the stuff in the car for the retreat, I decided to stop, pick up the package, and deliver it. The house number was four digits, but the first one was hard to read, however the last three were very clear. 

So I put the box in the car. Wow, I wonder what was in it, as it was pretty heavy. Then I got to the STOP and realized there were only FOUR houses on this street. I thought it was the same street after the STOP, but it was not. I looked at the house numbers, and there was the house with the last three digits. It was literally 50 feet from where the package had been sitting. 

I pulled into the driveway and dropped the box at the end of their step. How hard was that? This box had been sitting so close to its destination, but the driver obviously didn't care and just dumped it by the mailboxes on the street when he couldn't read the entire house number. Two seconds of thought, and it was at the correct house. My good deed of the day!

Then, I was off to the retreat. 

Packed for the retreat

Oh gosh—how much stuff does one person need to bring? It's crazy! But as I mentioned yesterday, my intent is that 1/3 of that will not come home. And I think that's going to work out just fine. A few more things to drop off or be picked up, and all is good! At least I could see out the back window, and there was still room at the back of the car—NOTHING on the passenger seat! 

And yes, I packed too many projects, but as someone mentioned yesterday, they are mood sewists. They need variety if they don't want to work on a specific project! I'm going to try to do something from each project I brought. HA—let's see how that goes. 

If I were home, DH and I would have cracked open the EXIT Game Advent Calendar for 2024. But alas, I'm here, not there. So the advent calendar has to wait—except that Ronda showed up with it. I politely declined to work on it because I'm part of a team, and I'm not going to let my team down. 

However, Ronda also brought this book, which I'd never seen. 

An Advent Calendar EXIT GAME BOOK!!!

It's an advent calendar in a book. How cool is that? Last night, after dinner, we got to work. Of course, everyone crowds around to see what we're doing. But these things can't be rushed. There's logic to follow and rules to figure out, as each game type is slightly different when determining if your answer is correct. 

A couple of wrong answers. Hmm - now what? Soon, I was by myself. Peace and quiet are what's required to figure these things out. Read carefully and OBSERVE. After some concentration, I shouted, "I'm a rock star!" because I had figured it out. Yeah!!! This is rated three dots out of five, and while I won't say that the puzzle was challenging, if you're not good at following directions, you wouldn't have got it!!!

Retreats are always so much fun; I met two new people this time and then caught up with long-time friends. It was a glorious start to the retreat, although some people had long and harrowing trips through the snow. Most of us arrived during the day when the ground was still clear. Then it started to snow in the evening. However, we all arrived safely. One more person is coming today, but hopefully, the roads will be fine. I don't think we got too much snow here, but the ground is covered. 

What was my first project? I had grabbed a handful of flannel scraps before I left. Why wait for 2025 when I can start working on them now? This is mindless sewing, which is perfect for a retreat. I had grabbed the leftovers from the backings of the flannel kids' quilts I'd recently quilted. 

Can you believe that I made EIGHTY squares!!! 

Eighty flannel squares from scraps

That's enough to make another quilt of the size that I've been quilting! This is BARELY scratching the surface of that laundry basket of scraps. So Elle was right again - dozens of quilt tops in those flannel bits!!! I would hate to have thrown that away; it's an entire quilt top! But I absolutely love rescuing this stuff, and it makes me feel good, and it's totally mindless, so it's right up my alley. That's why I will NOT give or throw this stuff away. I find it relaxing to work on. I certainly do NOT need another quilt for myself. 

I have one more bundle of flannel to deal with this morning, and then I'll be working on another project. OH - and I took the leftovers from each color and pieced them together. I might get a multi-colored block. 

The last bundle of flannel 

I have four Zoom classes in the middle of December, and I knew it would be tough to get all four prepped for the week when I return. I decided to bring some of them along with me. Two are presentations only, and I did some prep work before I left. I have the presentations on my external hard drive to work on those. And this morning, before anyone else was up, I finished some sewing homework for one of the classes. I'll be in good shape to prep everything on time. This is good because I still have some writing assignments to work on. I also brought those, and I'll have time to work on them. 

Yes - you can do anything with a portable office! 

Getting used to this keyboard is OK. The pictures on the screen are so brilliantly colored compared to my old laptop! I'm in love and will slowly work through the little changes I need to make, like changing the background to white, not black. But maybe I'll leave it black. It seems to be OK. 

On that note, I'm up and excited to get sewing today!!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!!