retreat, olympics, and stuff

First off I have to say Go Team Canada! If you missed last nights hockey game with The Canadian men's hockey team playing Team Russia you missed a corker. Team Canada hit the ice like something shot from a canon and played that way all game. Way to go boys! I sat and stitched on my Winter Wonderland project while watching the game. I know I said I was going to do nothing yesterday, but that is not as easy as it sounds. I have a friend who always says, "It's hard doing nothing; you never know when you are done." I agree.
I stayed on track with my eating yesterday and that is a good thing. I hope to make a little better progress this week.I didn't walk, but hope to today...before you know it the end of May will be here and I don't want to be dragging my feet in the 10 km walk in Ottawa.

I promised a few retreat pics and here they are with a brief description. As I have already mentioned we had a recycling theme, so we had some recycled projects to demo. Here are a few of them.

aprons from jeans.

Here's the one I made.

quilts from jeans.

Now before you say anything about the serious expression,  this picture was a self portrait, which in itself is not easy to do (my arms are only so long and I was concentrating on being centered); and it was early in the morning (I still have my nightgown on under my coat) This scarf was made from recycled t-shirts.

a purse from recycled ties. The center one was from the grandkids. I am giving the tie back to our grandaughter in the form of a purse.

I know I showed you a pic of the quilt made with 7 shirts, but did you know there was enough fabric to make the back of the quilt as well?

And do you want to know why used so many small pieces for the back? I wanted to save the shirt sleeves to make this...

not the best picture but they are toddler pants with the idea I found somewhere on line. Want to know what else we made with shirt sleeves?

Isn't this a great way to wrap a nice fresh bottle of New Brunswick maple syrup?...or wine..or bath salts?

Ok, let me think...we made pin cushions from recycled woolen sweaters, and from bottle caps, and baby food jars. I don't have those pics yet, but maybe tomorrow.

This pic is a little out of sequence , but at the end of it all we received lovely quilt printed cards signed by all the retreaters and tucked inside was a very generous gift certificate for our local quilt shop!

We played bingo for thread. You paid for your card with a spool of cotton thread and won a basket full of thread. As you can see we had some very serious bingo players. Good luck charms and all.

A lot of fun was had by all.

One of our regular retreaters was in a very serious accident on the way to guild meeting 2 weeks ago and was not able to be at retreat this year, so we all did a block and signed it with our best wishes and this will be her retreat keepsake from all of us.

group shot of the gang. Don't we look like we enjoyed ourselves?

this shot is of just a few of the completed projects from our annual mystery quilt. Phew! ...a long post, but just one more to leave you with. One day before retreat Sue and I were shopping at our local Staples; I have been wanting one of these for a long time now but thought it kind of silly to pay 5 dollars for such an un-necessary thing. Let me say...good purchase. If I had known how much fun and satisfaction would have come from it I would have paid full price for it long ago!

THAT WAS EASY!!