Camp Wannabe - Treasured Gifts

When Monique arrived for Camp Wannabe on March 9th she brought me a gift. Isn't this a sweet pincushion?

The overdyed floss is gorgeous. I love the back, too!

Thanks, Monique! You are so thoughtful!

Meri arrived bearing gifts as well. Check out this bouquet of roses! I've never seen leaves woven over the top like this. So pretty! The bouquet was in a pretty green tin.

Meri also gave me this neat sewing bird ornament.

So sweet! Meri's been designing and stitching sewing birds. She has a better close-up picture here. Thanks a bunch, Meri! You are too kind!

Saturday morning while I was flipping pancakes the phone rang and it was Taffy, calling from Camp Wannasew. She said we needed to make a list of all Camp Wannabe campers because there was going to be a drawing. A drawing? For US? How nifty is that? So I started a list. We talked about how sweet it was for the Wannasew campers to think of us Wannabe's.

Later Taffy called and we gave her the names of all campers. Then the surprise was revealed. The Silver Needle, host of Camp Wannasew, heard about our little Camp Wannabe and the drawing was for gifts from the shop! Everyone received Silver Needle pencils and Prairie Schooler freebie cards. Mary won the cutest pair of beaded duckie slippers and I was the winner of (are you ready for this???) a gorgeous Vera Bradley bag! It's huge, it has pockets everywhere (inside and out) and the pink and green paisley is so me!

Thanks again to Lindy and everyone at The Silver Needle for thinking of us and for the generous gifts. They were all very much appreciated! (And I feel like a rock star when I stroll into stitching gatherings with this great bag on my arm. Thank you so much!)

Meri decided to hold her own drawings, one for the Wannasew campers and one for the Wannabe's. She reached into her show-and-tell shoebox and pulled out two more sewing bird ornaments. Linda B. won for the Wannabe's. (Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Linda's ornament. Maybe Tuesday at Violet Threads.) Susan won for the Wannasew's. Here is her ornament.

Meri called Camp Wannasew to give Susan the good news. It was after 9pm and she had to try several different cell phone numbers before she finally got through, only to find out that Susan was already in bed! Of course they woke her up to tell her the good news. What a hoot!

I mentioned in my last blog entry that Meri bought a 1893 Ladies Home Journal at the antique mall and was reading to us Saturday evening as we stitched. Jane asked if there were recipes and Meri found one for doughnuts. We were amazed when Meri began reading, and it was written as a poem! Next thing we knew, Meri was pulling out her scrapbooking supplies and created this fantastic recipe card for Jane.

Isn't it incredible? Needless to say, Jane loves it! I was amazed at how quickly Meri put it all together. It would take me 6 weeks to think up the idea, 6 more weeks of second-guessing my choice of colors and materials and a year or two to actually get it made. Or partially made.

Later Meri asked Monique and I to each pick out something in the magazine that caught our eye. I found a page with the Brownies (by Palmer Cox) that had the cutest little picture at the very end of the story. Meri decided that one little picture wasn't enough, and before I knew it she had the following two pages done. She's going to use the entire page from the Ladies Home Journal and make it into my own little Brownie book.



Amazing! Thanks Meri! Just thinking about those little Brownies makes me smile.

Last but certainly not least, as a thank-you for hosting the weekend, the Wannabe girls chipped in and bought me a ticket for The Quilted Garden's bus trip to the AQS quilt show in Paducah. I went to the show last year with Linda B and we had a fantastic time. I was trying like crazy to sell stash so I could afford to go. Thanks to the Wannabe campers, I'm going next Thursday. Thanks so much, my friends!

A big thank-you to everyone for your nice comments. I'm always amazed that anyone is interested in my wordy, picture-heavy postings. Well, anyone other than Mom and Joy. They have to be interested. It's in the family contract.

I've been trying to stay caught up on my blog reading, and frankly it is tough! I don't comment nearly as often as I should. I now have 232 blog feeds on my list (eek!) and I have a hard time resisting the urge to add more. I'm most interested in what cross stitchers are up to, but I can't resist the eye candy on crazy quilting and crafting blogs...and you wouldn't believe what they're doing with crochet nowadays. I even voted for my favorites in The Softie Awards. Sigh. Too many blogs, not enough time.

Perhaps now I should go stitch something.

Edited to add, Blogger is stupid. I've adjusted and re-adjusted the spacing. I can't fix it. Sorry!