September IHSW at Stitch Basel!

I finally sorted through all my stuff an took the appropriate pictures, so here we go with the reatreat post! 

You know I don't usually post for IHSW - more often than not I forget all about it until after the fact, or I remember but the weekend in question is just too busy to allow for any kind of hermitting. But the weekend of September 15th to 17th was a special one - it was the first Stitch Basel cross stitch retreat! So about 50 stitchers from all over the world (mostly Europe, but we did have one or two ladies flying in from the US) gathered in Basel, Switzerland, and we hermitted together. I apologize in advance that I won't post any pictures of the venue or actual stitchers, but I didn't feel comfortable to post pictures of other people on this blog without asking...if you go around Instagram or Flosstube, I'm sure you can find some impressions under the #stitchbasel tag, though!

The retreat started on Friday morning and was running until Sunday evening, with the stitching room (located at the Bar du Nord at Basel Bad Bf) closing up late each night and opening up early in the morning. It was organized by three lovely Swiss ladies (Dawn, Ina and Amy) who made sure we had the perfect location (including an outside stitching area by a fountain), drinks, snacks, and the best time ever! 

Since I don't live too far from Basel (about an hour door to door, taking the slow train) I didn't get a hotel room, but instead opted to go home every night (which turned out to be a good thing, as I could bring my goodies home every day and didn't have to carry everything at once on the last day!), an I arrived shortly after the 10am opening on Friday morning. At first I was a little intimidated, as a lot of the people already there already knew each other (apparently, there is a surprisingly big German/Swiss flosstube community called Die Stechmücken that I didn't even know about!) and the tables were either full, or completely empty. I decided to settle down on an empty table and was soon joined by Mia, an impressive stitcher and multicrafter from northern Norway, Marion from France, and Paolo, who was local to Basel (and working on the most gorgeous Chatelaine I have ever seen - a smallish Mushroom-mandala that will definitely go on the wish list!). In the afternoon, my friend Giselle also joined us, so there was a familiar face among all the new friends.

That first day, I had a hard time settling in to actually stitch. Too exciting all the new people to meet and things to look at! A couple of vendors had joined the retreat, both as participants and to sell their stuff - from Hungary, we had xJuDesign with her wonderful fabrics, SnowflowerDiaries and VintageTulip, both with wonderful patterns. There was Starparade with his patterns, ColourFever from Switzerland with the most wonderful floss, and the Stechmücken Shop from Germany with a mixture of fabrics and little goodies. This first day, I only bought a piece of fabric and a set of patterns that I couldn't resist, and will show a little later.

Our wonderful organizers had also found a long list of sponsors, including DMC, Zweigart, Sulky, Casa Cania and many more, and filled a goodie bag for each of the participants. This is not even everything that was in there, but will give you a good idea of how very spoilt we were!

 

There was a freebie table too, where people could unload unwanted supplies and sometimes WIPs for other people to adopt. There was a lot of gorgeous things going around, and I was trying very hard not to be greedy, so I only ended up with a couple of things.

Later in the afternoon, I finally manage to settle in for some stitching. I had brought several projects, but this first day I worked on Kitsune, one of my UXS projects (that still needs a page finish this year), and added a couple hundred stitches.

That first night, me, Mia, Marion, Giselle and her boyfriend went out for dinner (which was delicious but damn, food is expensive in Switzerland!) and then I took the train home together with Elena, another new friend. Who apparently grow up less than 2km from where I grew up, is the same age as me, and it took us 34 years and a trip to Basel to finally meet!

Saturday morning, we were back in the stitching room bright and early. Saturday was the day I did most of my shopping - I had picked some stuff out the day before, slept on it, and made my decisions. Not that some last minute purchases wouldn't slip in on Sunday - oops! 

So I got some patterns (the center set is the one I got on Friday)

and some more fabric. I wasn't too naughty, I got plans for both of these! The brown 40ct will be nice for the patterns I bought, plus some other smalls, and the moody-green one is for the Greenhouse of Oddities by Lola Crow Cross Stitch (if you haven't seen that one yet, check it out - I had eyeing it previously but someone brought a finished version to the retreat, and NEED!)

I also picked out some of the gorgeous colour fever flosses. For these I got at least...kind of...a plan? The blue-ish cottons I wanted for the border of the Cloudsfactory Magical Creatures Calendar that I've been meaning to start for years now. The purple silks maybe for a small-ish Ink Circles and the blue and orange go well together and I'm thinking maybe some kind of quaker-ish design? I'll have a deep dive into patterns eventually, but don't need any immediate start plans right now!

Also on Saturday was the Smalls Exchhange, but I've already told you all about that! What I haven't told you about was that some of the participants also had prepared small gifts to share with all of us. I felt woefully underprepared and am already thinking about what I could prepare for next time!

 

I also had my retreat start. I had not actually planned to have one, but the goodie bag I showed you before also contained not one, but 4 (or maybe 1/2) fully kitted and exclusive projects! Exciting, isn't it? There were a biscornu and pin cushion, designed by VintageTulip and SnowflowerDiaries and kitted up by xJuDesign:

These two I have no doubts I'll end up starting sooner rather than later. The third one though was a retreat pattern designed by LillyPillyStitches, with different motifs with a connection to Basel and/or Switzerland, and that one I wanted to start during the retreat, while the memories were still present and fresh, and that's what I did!

I stitched that cute little goat on the mountain and most of the multicoloured diamonds (they were inspired by the roof of a church in Basel) during the retreat. The four little Edelweiss-flowers were added a couple days later, I didn't take a proper picture of my retreat progress.

We went home a little earlier on Saturday since we were (well, at least I was) pretty exhausted after two long days of socializing (although being around like minded people and stitching helped a ton with keeping my social batteries loaded!) and then back early on Sunday. 

First on the agenda was some last minute shopping, as the vendors were starting to pack up! To back up a bit, in the goodie back there was also a beautiful project bag, hand sewn by one of the organizers for each of us. Now I had so far resisted the call of these bags, since I was pretty sure once I bought one, I'd have to buy them for all my projects...well...I was right, and so I bought one more, and maybe will be getting some for Christmas...(left was in the goodie bag, right is the one I bought, with a sneak peak on that fabric from Friday!

At this point I had bought something from all the vendors but SnowflowerDiaries and Starparade (they both have patterns that I really like, but neither brought any paper copies of the ones I might have bought), so I looked at what else they had on offer, and got a needle minder from Starparade and selection of adorable wooden buttons from Snowflower Diaries!

This has been a long post already, but we're almost at the end! On Sunday, there was some more relaxed stitching...mostly outside, enjoying the morning air and some good coffee, and then inside, as more and more people were leaving and the remaining stitchers moved closer together. I think we were all a little sad to see it end and part with our new-found friends! 

So after some last stitches stitched, finishes admired, prizes handed our...wait, prizes? Yup! There were doorprizes (raffled off at every full hour...or usually, a bunch at a time, once a day), a quiz, and some prizes for special achievements. One last prize was given out for 'most stitches done during the retreat' and I think I just got lucky because most of the heavy hitters had already left, or just weren't counting their stitches, but I won with about 1.6k stitches done over three days! My prize was this beautiful Dimensions kit on the left (the Russian kit on the right was the door prize I won on day one).

But after that, it really was time to go home. I had retreat hangover for a couple of days - it really was hard to get back to normal life after three days of such fun! - and am now anxiously awaiting the announcent of the next stitchy event. But thankfully, I got in contact with a lot of stitchers who live not too far away, so we'll probably have some get togethers in the mean time too! 

As a last note, the retreat also totally revived my stitchy bug and left me with a terrible case of I-want-to-stitch-it-all...so I've been flitting around projects a bit. I promise though, I'll be back with some mores erious progress on things soon! There has been one more sneaky post-retreat start, featuring that gorgeous fabric I've been teasing you about...turns out it was a great match for some Jodyri-floss I got a couple years back, so I started my first Ink Circles, Cirque des Cercles, on this amazingly soft 40ct evenweave!

I hope you enjoyed this 'little' excursion. Regular updates will (hopefully) resume soon :)