Back to Real Life (aka Post CATS)

Well, I finally arrived back home this afternoon from CATS. I had a wonderful weekend and from reading other blogs very quickly, I see I'm not the only one that enjoyed the weekend. It was a lovely chance to see Jo and Cathy again and catch up on a years worth of life and to meet Joanie, Jenna, Leslie and Sue in person as well as stitch again with Nancy. Since I moved to Maine, life has gotten busy for both of us so it's really wonderful when we have extended time to stitch together.

I think I will post my CATS report in at least two parts as I still have stuff to catch up on before work tomorrow. I drove down to my sister's in NH on Wednesday evening and then drove to pick up Nancy in MA on Thursday morning. We left her house around 9:15am or so and headed south to PA. After a stop at Cracker Barrel for lunch and a bit of shopping, we got to Hershey about 5:30. Joanie called and we headed down to the hotel cafe to meet her and have a cup of coffee. By that time the shopping mart had opened up to the public so the three of us headed over there. It was packed. You couldn't get near the Picture This Plus booth because it was swamped. I think they sold about 2/3rds of their fabric that evening! We browsed around and each bought something. I was very restrained - I will show you my stash tomorrow. I think we stitched a bit after a late dinner and then went to bed, agreeing to meet for breakfast in the hotel at 10:00am.

On Friday, we met Carol and Mike for breakfast and then they headed off to adventure around Hershey and we headed to the shopping mart area to browse some more and stitch. Cathy arrived around noon and we slowly met Jenna and Leslie and Sue. It was so wonderful to meet so many bloggers - it's just like you're meeting old friends. No awkwardness or anything and it is such fun to see what everyone is working on. It's so awe inspiring to see the incredible stitched pieces. Jo and Pete arrived later that evening and we all met up in the stitcher's lounge to get some serious chatting and stitching done.

Here are some photos taken on Friday.

This is Cathy and Leslie (on the left), Jenna and Jo stitching in the Stitcher's Lounge on Friday evening. And that's Joanie on the left and Nancy on the right. Disregard the date because the time stamp was wrong on my camera.

More tomorrow!