The Tobermory Event

 I keep telling myself that I'm going to blog smaller and more often, but that clearly isn't working out so well.  sigh.

Tobermory with the Beach Girls happened from Oct. 17 - 22.  I would happily have stayed another week but responsibilities are a fact of life sometimes.

This is part of the sewing stuff.  Retreats require a lot of packing!  The upstairs fridge is jammed full and the downstairs fridge is holding the overflow.

Getting reacquainted with welcome cocktails. 

Sunset on the 19th.

Afternoon cocktails on the 20th.  Most of the week was gorgeous weather.

We did accomplish some stitching.

In the weeks leading up to retreat I made pear-infused vodka and the Peartinis were a hit with the girls.  Some years they're not quite as enthusiastic over my cocktails.  Here's the recipe
from the spruce eats.  The numbers on the right make a pitcher of 5 servings.

This was definitely the laziest and least productive one of the bunch.

When we left on Friday we took a bit of a circuitous route home, going to Lions Head for lunch at The Taste Kitchen.  That was my first indoor-dining experience since the pandemic started.  I figured where would I be LESS likely to catch something?  We had spent the morning figuring out how to get our vaccination certificates on our phones - when you go through that much trouble it is necessary to make it worth your while.  The whitefish and sweet potato fries WERE worth it.

Since returning I have the quilting done on a little xmas wall hanging that I pieced up there.  Currently at the hand-stitching of the binding stage, and then I'll be adding some embellishments.  The star needs some work to make it show up, and the packages need some ribbons & buttons.  

All of the green squares are leftovers from 2013 when we made the bags.  Personally, I think it's a miracle that I could FIND the ziploc bag of squares from eight years ago.  I still have a bunch of pink squares left, so there might be a valentines quilt in my future.