And then there were 3

...Krista's, that is. Here we are! It really happened!

Now I know what it's like when bloggy friends get to meet in person, laugh over shared online experiences, see each other's work firsthand and just realize that friendships made over the internet are every bit as real and fun as those you make in person. I still can't believe these girls made the trip to Vancouver for retreat, but I certainly am glad they did. Felicity is a local Vancouver girl but it was her first time on this retreat. We had a ball and it was really fun for many of my local friends to meet them, too!

As always, retreat was a blast. This time I think I may have been socializing a wee bit too much, so productivity was down, but that's perfectly okay by me because I had a ball. Lots of laughs, a bit of wine, copious quantities of junk food (an apple just doesn't cut it at midnight when you want to sew for 2 more hours!), a bit more wine. Heaps of inspiration. Everyone else got tons done! Check out this conference room - Bena's One Block Wonder is at the back on the design wall, our Christmas block raffle blocks are next to it stuck to the white board, Rossie's French General X table topper is in the foreground. There are no quilters in sight because this photo was taken at 2:30 a.m. Only the fittest sewists can survive until 2:30 (or maybe it's those with the best chocolate supply)!

Here are Krista and Felicity, holding a 2:30 a.m. design charrette on Krista's gorgeous bee blocks.

As predicted, it snowed! It really came down all of Saturday afternoon. Wet and miserable and cold. I held off on the snowball fight. I'm pretty sure there wasn't one other person I could convince to leave the building. In fact, we had to move our (covered outdoor) basting tables inside to the lodge foyer because frostbite was setting in for those poor people trying to pin their quilts. I also heard the 505 was coming out of the can like chunky snowflakes!

Here's our motley crew in the rowdy corner of the work room.

K2-Krista, Sindy, Felicity and K3-Krista

K3 was busy running her one-woman craft fair sweat shop for three days. It's a wonder she went home with any stock, everything was so beautiful we wanted to buy it all! I managed to convince her to sell me a gorgeous Echino and flannel scarf (see first photo) and all was going so well until I discovered there was a rat on my scarf. Eek!

Here she is turning a zippy pouch

K2 kept us in stitches (which is better to say than she was killing us - because she could have!) with her 5 lb Gingher hedge trimmers. Look at those things (below)!

I was busy with some gift-making and did manage to get binding on a queen sized quilt that K2 beautifully quilted on her long arm for me. It's the first time I've had a homemade quilt to sleep under at retreat (even though it's really intended for my son T for Christmas...every quilt needs a test drive). No photos of that yet though.

The beginnings of a robot tumbler pillow cover for my nephew - I brought my GO! Baby for people to try out and used it myself to cut out 3 sets of tumblers

Here are my house tape measures in progress. I was testing Laurraine's pattern. It is now available in her pattern shop - a fantastic gift idea for any sewist!

I'm still catching up on sleep and unpacking my large tote. I'm excited about the progress on my Christmas gifts and hope to resume stitching this weekend. As always, parting is such sweet sorrow (so I'm not sure why they look so darn happy). They were crying on the inside, I bet.

The Kristamobile departs for Seattle. Sniff, sniff. Thanks for coming, girls.

You're both the adorablest.

And there you have it. Retreat Report 2011. I can't wait until next year. Stay tuned for a reveal of the sweetest mini that K2 made for me!! I just need some light to take a decent photo.