Fantastic Day

It was Needlecraft Haven Autumn Meet Up here in Nuneaton today but before I share my photos I must add three pictures for the Gifted Gorgeousness SAL hosted by Jo.

Each year I take part in The Christmas Tree Festival at my family church, my tree theme this year is 'Joy to the World' and I have received these beautiful ornaments from fellow stitchers - thanks you so much they will look amazing on my tree.

From Julie 

From Sally G

From Sally W

And so to today's great meet up - five of us from Needlecraft Haven meet at our Scout Headquarters. Angi and Gill came from Peterborough by train, Lindsay drove down from Cheshire and Julie's hubby brought her over from Leicester. It was so nice to sit and chat all day with a little stitching and so much laughter.

We always have a book exchange - it's a random choice and this time we played a little dice game. We each had a book (they are all wrapped so we don't know what is in them or who's book is who's) and took it in turn to roll the dice. We passed the books to our left the number o times on the dice - it worked ish, we were too busy laughing as we seemed to keep ending up with the same book - eventually we had a book that wasn't ours and eagerly unwrapped our new reads.

Book Exchange

My new books

 My exchange book was Tangled Lives by Hilary Boyd and was from Julie. I have read her first book Thursdays in the Park and as I just finished a book I'll be starting this tonight. My other book was one from Lindsay - last meet up I picked Lindsay's book and this is the enxt one in the series, she kindly brought it along for me.

We also have a goody bag exchange - this time the theme was numbers. I always make cakes and put a raffle ticket under a cake and the other ticket half under a bag. We chose a cake and have the bag that corresponds to the ticket underneath. I decorated the cakes with numbers - they were chocolate beetroot cakes, yummy.

Number cakes

Goody Bags

The beautiful items in my Goody Bag from
Lindsay - her theme was number 3 

I picked Lindsay's bag and she had themed it on the number 3. In it was a set of 3 cutters, three hand creams, 3 notebooks, three pens, 3 metres of ribbon, DMC using number 3, 93g of Roses and three beautiful stamps.

I chose number 4 for my theme and wrapped my gifts with little messages on each - Julie won my bag and had great fun opening the parcels - this time we took it in turn to open or Goody Bags so we could all see who had what and how the gifts related to the chosen number. We had bags for number 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 - no repeats :) 

My wrapped gifts on the theme of Number 4

The goodies inside the parcels 

Every meet up we hold a raffle to raise funds to keep Needlecraft Haven ad free - some lovely prizes donated and we will have enough to get rid of those pesky ads for a while.

Great raffle prizes

There was some great stitching on show - amazing work from just four stitchers. I do enjoy seeing what everyone has been doing, although we chat about our craft online it's is so so nice to see the work in person.

Lindsay's show table

Angi and Gill's show table

Julie's show table

I've had a fantastic day - thank you Angi, Gill, Julie and Lindsay for making it such fun, see you all next spring :)