OK, here we go.  This is my last Oregon post.  We had the Gingerbread and Holly Workshop on Friday and Saturday while I was there.  Debbie and I had a blast doing two days crammed full of classes.  I'm afraid we might have overwhelmed the ladies with projects!!  I sure hope they loved everything and I think we have a few new wool converts.  It's always fun to see someone get "hooked on wool".  I absolutely loved meeting all the Oregon ladies and had the best time with them.  Each and every one was unique and different and brought lots of fun to the classes.  They asked me to move there but I think I have to stay in the sunny south.  Maybe they can take a road trip here someday.................

Everyone got busy tracing all the pieces for the gingerbread man mat.......sorry there was so much to do there gals!!

All of the groups ended up with nicknames at some point during the classes.  This group was called "the Rebels" because they were trying to go another direction from what their teacher was teaching.  You go girls!!

This group became know as the "Over Achievers"!!  They somehow stayed a step ahead of everyone. 

The room was decorated for Christmas to get us in the mood!

Deborah wants to know what's going on over there......

Terri and Charlotte came to the classes together and did great on their projects.  They were part of the "Teacher's Pets" group.  Wonder how they got that name?

Peggy was a new convert to wool and Gayle came all the way from the coast for the classes.  I think they became fast friends.

Shelly has her gingerbread mat all pinned down and ready to stitch.

Shelly and Lynda laying out their Holly girl.

Carole and Joan getting ready to try their hand at needle felting.

Lunchtime!!!  Jan had lunch catered for us each day.  That was so sweet and we were all hungry by the time it got to the classroom.   I had to threaten everyone one day that once they got all their pieces pinned down we could stop for lunch.  That speeded things up a bit!!  Mean teacher!!!

Look how beautiful these lemon tarts are.  I couldn't resist a picture of them.

Back to work at the needle felting.  Gayle is just getting started with her piece.

I think Shelly is telling me I'm not taking her picture.  Guess what, I did!!  SMILE!!

OK, this is a flag project that Debbie did with her Wooly Wednesday gals this summer.  I think it's adorable and hope we can do this sometime next year.  I love it!

Took this picture from the airplane on the way home.  Thought the crop circles were so interesting.  A possible future pattern??

The clouds were unbelievable on the way home.  There were huge, billowy, crazy shapes, just really surreal to me.

Well, that's about it for my Oregon trip.  Lots of other pictures but at least you got to see some of the highlights.  Hope you enjoyed the trip as much as we did.  Thanks to Jeff and Debbie for having us and to Jan and Brian for making the workshop great fun. 

On Thursday before Debbie and I were to start our workshop, we decided to go to Washington to a town called Kamas to another antique mall.  The guys were with us and we had a great time.  After antiquing we were headed to another destination (ice cream shop!) when we passed this old school.  We had Jeff turn around so we could see what it was.  It was an old school, I believe, from the early 1900's but was now owned by a man who manufactured steel bells.  We were able to get a peek inside where he showed us the tools of his trade and shared some stories about the building.  I wanted a bell so badly, but can you imagine the shipping on that!!

I could just see this bell in my yard!

Ran across this guy inside the school building.  Now where would we ever see something like this on the east coast??

And this fella was hanging right over the bear.  Quite a sight!!  I'll just stick with the old bell myself.

Beautiful view of one of the rivers.  They have so many I can't remember which is which.

Finally we reach our destination.....Eastside Ice Cream boasting the largest ice cream cone around.  Jeff was up for the challenge...........

and a mighty fine job he did finishing that whole ice cream cone!!!!!  Mind you, this was after we had just had lunch there.  He's a real man to take on that kind of challenge!

This waterfall isn't far from Jeff and Debbie's house.  It was quite a bit slower than when we were there last because so much of the snow has already melted.

Mark and Jeff hiked to the top of the falls and Mark took this picture to prove it.  They went pretty much straight up the mountain side.  It was a pretty strenuous walk, but they did it.

Tomorrow I'll try and post pictures of the classes.  Don't want to overload you with too much at one time!!  Thanks for sharing our trip......or at least a small part of it.......I think I took over 400 pictures!!!

WE'RE HOME!!!!

We arrived home around 1am this morning.  I think I'm still on Oregon time.  I didn't go to bed until 3am and slept until 10am.  Guess we'll get back to normal in a few days.  I surely meant to post more often while we were in Oregon but either I was busy working on class stuff or had trouble getting Debbie's computer to work.  Everytime I had a minute to do a post, the computer seemed to be down so I just took that as an omen that it wasn't meant to be.  So now I get to share some of our trip after the fact.  I won't try to bore you too much but we had such a fun time and loved every minute we had there.

This is a fun cabinet in Debbie's hallway.  Lots of fun stuff on there to look at!

This is a really cool antique mall called Monticello.  I think we went here on Monday.  Just took an overview shot of part of the shop.  We spent an hour on just the first aisle.  Lots of temptations!

Loved this booth.  Everywhere you turned was something fun.

Another fun booth.  The pictures don't do any of this justice.

Couldn't figure out a way to get this cool "gazebo" home.  Debbie and I both fell in love with it.  I did take quite a few pictures in case it can be reproduced some day...........

Another pretty famous Portland antique mall.  Didn't take pictures inside so this is all you get!

Debbie nicknamed Mark and Jeff "Lewis and Clark".  Jeff was always pointing the way and his sidekick exploring right along.  They have a park close called the same name so we had the guys pose for a picture under their names. 

Finally, some of my boxes are showing up.  I shipped quite a few boxes of supplies for the classes and couldn't put together my kits until those boxes showed up. 

Speaking of kits, here are the Holly girl kits.  Spent one whole day putting together everything for the classes.  They loved the packaging!

She's a grand old flag......looks like a postcard!

The triplets stopped by for lunch.  They are so adorable, all lined up like little birdies waiting to be fed.  It was quite a sight to watch.

Debbie has two groups of women that meet on Wednesday for a class called Wooly Wednesday.  This time I got to teach the class.  We did the little snowman head ornaments.  A nice group of ladies. 

We had a few hours to kill before the evening class so I ran down to the quilt shop.  It is so beautiful with everything you could ever want.  I snapped a few pictures but this only covers a small portion of the shop.

Debbie designed the covered wagon for their Sew Oregon shop hop they had recently.  I told her she needed to turn that into a pattern.  It was so sweet.

I drooled over this display!!!!

Time for the Wooly Wednesday night class.  This was a much smaller group which allowed me to visit a little more with the ladies.  Super nice gals. 

Deborah's snowman head sprung a leak!!!  Uh-oh!

OK, that takes us up through Wednesday.  I'll share more tomorrow.  Don't want to take too much of your time.  And I sure hope my gals here in North Carolina got caught up on all their projects while I was gone.  We need to have show and tell!!!  And to my new Oregon friends, keep stitching.  You never know when I might pop back out there for show and tell!!  I loved meeting all of you and thoroughly enjoyed my time with you.  Even if you did make fun of my accent!!!!