Of Mice and Men - And A new C.I. "The Retreat"

If you've known me for a while there are two sayings I throw around a lot.  "NLIP"  "Not Like I Planned"  and "Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men".
I am a Plan-A-Lot-Amus.  I like to plan, and I like to over plan and prepare. If I'm having a dinner party - I will over prepare food rather than have too little. To me the RSVP at the bottom of an invite is not a suggestion or a request - it's a courteous requirement.  However I have come to a point in my life where I accepted the fact that just because you plan it, doesn't guarantee it will happen.  And almost always will not happen exactly like you think it will, especially if there are others involved.   That being said -  Part of the retreat was a challenge and even so I still had a very nice time.
I will spare you the loooonnng story of what all happened with teaching the wallet. All is well that ends well and it ended well. I will however share a few tidbits, and lessons I learned.

1,  Don't teach a class where the students haven't had a chance to purchase the pattern if you are not going to give them the pattern.  I did not copy the pattern.  ( It is Copy Righted and for sale locally)

2.  Don't teach off a template that someone else thinks is going to work. - unless you've had time to get together ahead of time to verify it will work.  :)

 3.  Don't wait for students that don't show up on time.

I spent Thursday afternoon trying to figure out the template copies we were going to hand out. By Friday morning I realized they weren't going to work.  I waited around for one of the ladies to show up and by the time I did other things happened and I couldn't start the class until Friday afternoon. This caused one lady that had a pattern go on her own.  The wallets required hardware and the hardware was malfunctioning.  It just had it's issues. LOL
But out of 7 people, 2 people made multiple wallets, and only one person left the retreat without the wallet made,. That had in part to do with malfunctioning hardware.
I will be teaching this again in September to our guild.  I now have a much better plan on how I will be doing it.   I wish I had pictures of the few that were made, a few of the ladies were out of town so I can't get them but maybe some of the locals will bring them so I can get a picture.
Here was mine:

So as of Saturday morning I did a little bit of finishing up help for a couple of the students and their wallets, but was now getting ready to work on my stuff.  As you will see from my last post - I took a bunch of new projects I wanted to start.  After the wallet experience - I didn't feel in the mood to decipher yet another pattern to start either the purse or the Locker Caddy.  So I started working on my "Snowman Collector".   I was able to finish block #12

Then I worked on putting the top together.

And as the last man standing I got the first border around it before I left on Sunday.  It still needs two plain borders, and then another pieced border that has trees.

The open part at the top will have the words "Snowman Collector"  - which my friend was so sweet to take home and cut out for me with her AccuGo Cutter.   And I've already received in the mail.

Now About the NEW C I

We have our very own Judy Niemeyer Certified Instructor.  

After two years of long hard work and several quilts she was surprised to tears when her sweet husband brought in a cake for all of us  and flowers for her at the retreat making an announcement on how proud he was of her.   That is her oldest son with them.

Here are the quilts she had to make at the final certification workshop.  (These are not her only quilts - she has several)

So that's about it for now - it ended up being a very nice retreat and I did get some stuff done.  I was very tired and have slept a lot in the last few days - but looking forward to my next retreat in October. But they do take a lot out of you so kind of happy that it is a few months down the road. 

Have a Blessed Day - Lynn