Mini-Retreat

It's a treat to visit Sue on so many levels.  The 17 years she has invested in her yard and garden envelope her house in a park environment.  I left here Monday morning at 8:00 and brought lunch, so we had plenty of time to sit on the back deck and spin until dinner.

But before we got started, Sue gave me the cook's tour.  She has worked for months, getting it ready for the Soroptomist's garden tour two weeks ago and 1,100 people visited over the two days,  She worked hard for months in preparation and it's reputation is well-earned.

Sue is her own landscaper, creating pockets of interest throughout her 3 1/2 acre oasis and she says she's running out of places to plant things.  I was experiencing my own little mini-retreat.

We stopped spinning and ate an early dinner because she had invited a group over for the evening.  It's been a while since we've all gotten together but we made up for lost time by talking and laughing over fiber, food and wine until 10:30.  We all kept remarking about how long it's been and now wonderful the evening was.

Lindsey showed us her spotty bunny with her dotty dress floppy ears.

I brought towels to sell at the tail-gate sale that was scheduled for before the guild meeting the next day, but the group wanted a preemptive viewing.  So they got one.  The next thing I knew there were towels all over the place.

Eva resolved the low lighting problem by using her iPhone flashlight.

The tail-gate sale was a success, followed by a program presented by Faye Schoolcraft who sculpts with raw wool.  This one is inspired by Jackson Pollock and uses thrums from Ingrid Knox.  Faye lives locally and will be offering classes.  I wish I lived locally!

She sculpted this bust from wool and her own hair that she'd saved from her hairbrush for three years.  

She also wet felts on a large scale.  I saw a sign-up sheet with a lot of names on it.  Clearly she had stirred up plenty of interest and there were groups of animated conversation when Sue and I slunk away.

The original purpose of the trip was to visit our friend Dee who is in hospice which we did that morning.  We had also managed to squeeze in a mid-day visit to see Jan Ever's remodeled house and get the full tour, and we were suddenly tired to death.  I didn't fall asleep until after 10:00 and then was back on the road first thing the next morning.

Today Ian and I are doing laundry and packing our suitcases.  Our friend Petey is driving up from from SoCal and will get here this afternoon.  Tomorrow morning we'll pile into our Forester and take off to spend a week with my two sons and their families in Bend, Oregon.