Better Than Trick-or-Treating

I'm home from St. Charles and have a chance to unpack my bags, although I'm still doing the laundry. This is the St. Charles right next door to St. Louis MO, rather than St. Charles in Louisiana. I think I would have enjoyed visiting the LA version again after many years, and I know I would have enjoyed the food more. I did survive 5 days of the Midwest's "fine" food. Seriously, did you know they deep fried even my salad croutons? Dang, I'm craving gumbo and blackened seafood now!

A peek at the Ink Circles booth: the new stuff table

What nourishment I couldn't find for my stomach was made up for by the feast my eyes and brain. And with two minions helping in the booth I was able to escape periodically and lose myself among the walls of silks and samplers.

Oh, Glorious Gloriana. New colors of lovely silk!

And 32 (woot!) new colors of Tudor Silk by Gloriana.
This is the superfine stuff, perfect for
over one and micro masterpieces.

Weeks has a new supplier for 40 count
undyed linen, which means it's now
coming available again in their dyed colors!

Elizabeth Taledo was there with her new
line of trims. Is it wrong to be thinking
Cthulhu when I look at the tiny green ric rack?

I've had Treenway silks in my spinning basket, but now
they make silk for stitching!!!

I've had a few customers stitch my monochromes in Sulky.
They now make a smaller size spool. I must try this out.

Wayne at Doodlin' Around makes these awesome little
boxes and baskets. 

Of course, Weeks had new cotton colors too.

As I unload my stash, I realize I ran out of show weekend well before I got to visit all of my favorite booths and explore all the new ones. I can't believe I missed popping into Gentle Arts thread booth for instance.

We also had a little time outside of show hours to explore old St. Charles.  Hannah found Mr. Boone to be quite a charmer.

The town was abuzz! Cicadas Katydids were everywhere, but were hard to photograph without zoom capabilities on my mobile.

What is the point of camouflage when making that much noise?

St. Louis's local beer...

Take note that Schlafly is duly represented in Project 99.

The minions and I enjoy a meal at the Trailhead Brewery
and I got to enjoy the only stout beer I could find in MO.

And I finally managed to fly through Salt Lake
City at an appropriate hour to enjoy a
Polygamy Porter.  If I'd had a longer layover, I would
have had two. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

My head is so full of wonderful ideas and thoughts, I feel ready to explode.  My deepest appreciation to all of the shops that came, making the event viable, and to all of the other vendors. Synergy at its finest.

Spawn of Roll Your Own

Happy August! Time for the next RYO installment. This month I chose to make little baby mandalas.  I call them the Spawn of RYO, and named them after the three scariest siblings I could think of: Cindy, Jan, and Marcia.

Spawn of RYO: Cindy (left), Jan (center), and Marcia (right) in Halloween colors

For those who didn't get the name thing for these, there was a really lousy sitcom in the 70's called the Brady Bunch. Unlike today, where we  have a thousand different choices of junk to waste our time watching, back then it was really limited. In a way, it gives all of those in my generation a common denominator. In any case, the three girls in the family were named Cindy, Jan, and Marcia, and they squabbled about typical things and learned wholesome family value lessons. Jan, the middle girl always complained her older sister Marcia got the better shake in life. (You can just hear Jan chanting: "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.")

Spawn of RYO in Heated Stare

I ran a little poll to select which of the three would be offered to everyone in the base RYO group. The other two minis are offered to the people who are opting in for sequels.  I appreciate everyone who took the poll as to which chart to offer to the group, but I must say I rigged it in Jan's favor so she would finally win. Well, I couldn't say for certain she would, but I gave her owls. :-)  Jan got 62% of the vote. Go, Jan!

Spawn of RYO in Candyduck

If you're new to my RYO concept and you'd like to learn a bit more, you can see the group description here.

RYO charts are now available only in printed form from your favorite shop or directly from my webshop.