Retreat!

Kate, Judy and I went to Ballarat for the weekend and stayed in a new to us place which we booked through Stayz.  It was an upside down town house so the living was upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs.  This was a little annoying as we had to cart our sewing things up a flight of stairs but once up (and down!) it was fine.  I had taken my cross stitch to work on to avoid having to take my machine up the stairs although I'd hazard a guess that my bag of wine possibly weighed more ;-)

Judy came with me and we met Kate at Millrose Quilting and Gallery in Ballan.  We had a lovely browse around the store and then had a hot chocolate.  One of us may have eaten a lemon slice but as it wasn't me, for a change, I won't dob on Judy her.

From there we went to The Pickled Pig quilt shop in Ballarat and to the French Café nearby to get Judy one of us a red velvet lamington but unfortunately it seems as though they've stopped baking them.

Fear not though, we were able to get our sweet fix at Beechworth bakery.  Where we may have ordered more than we needed.

The next stop was to Gail's Patchwork Emporium which was beautiful, as always.  Whilst there Kate was almost strangled when she suggested we go to Spotlight after previously deciding she didn't want to go there therefore the trip had originally been planned to avoid having to go out of our way to get there.

Spotlight had some bargains and we went to the local Aldi while we were there.  It was at this point I realised I had no idea how to get into our accommodation and I had hot and cold flushes worrying myself silly over it.  I finally managed to bring up the keycode details and flashed them at Kate.  Once at the accommodation I could not find those details ANYWHERE so I had a small panic again but luckily I hadn't strangled Kate at the quilt shop because she remembered the numbers and we were able to get inside.

It was a rather cool weekend at Ballarat.  We had frost which was beautiful!

I worked on my wine greyhound cross stitch and it's looking a lot more like a dog!  I did intend on just filling in blocks of colour but I ended up working on one of the hardest parts where I had to change threads every five stitches or so! Still, I guess I can work on the easy sewing in front of the TV sometime.

All in all it was a great weekend away with chat, laughs and fun with friends. I, of course, did not think to take a single picture of what the other two worked on!  Judy finished a Christmas quilt top and worked hard on a Chip quilt.  Kate finished making a cover all tunic for her next Bali holiday and pottered with another top.

Only 51 sleeps until the next retreat!  Woo!