A Weekend of Stabbing Fabric

I was on another road trip this past weekend—this time, to an embroidery retreat in Ephrata, Washington. Embroidery is something I started doing last winter when I needed a project to work on in the evenings. I’ll sit and bind quilts or comforters if I have them, and occasionally I’ll knit, but I like simple stitching projects, too. (For some reason, I never caught the counted cross-stitch bug.) One of the young women at our church suggested that I look up the “Charisma’s Corner” videos on YouTube, which I did, and I was hooked. Charisma Horton does wool penny embroidery using a variety of stitches and threads. I loved the layers of texture and the way she quilted around the embroidery when it was done. This is one of Charisma’s projects:

When I found out last spring that Charisma was planning an embroidery retreat in Ephrata, I signed up. I was not going to pass up the opportunity to learn from her in person. And Ephrata is easy to get to, relatively speaking. I should note, for my east coast friends, that this Ephrata is pronounced differently than the one in Pennsylvania. That one is pronounced EPHrata, with a short A and the emphasis on the first syllable. The one is Washington is pronounced EphRATa, with a long A and the emphasis on the second syllable. Not at all confusing.

I will also give you a quick road map of Washington state if you’ve never visited: I-90 runs east to west across the state. Spokane is at the east end. Ritzville is about an hour west of Spokane. Moses Lake is another hour west of Ritzville. Ellensburg is roughly another hour west of Moses Lake, and then you travel up and over Snoqualmie Pass and down into the Seattle metro area. In between those cities is—depending on the location—farmland, high desert scrub, or a rainforest. Despite having traveled across Washington state many dozens of times, I’m still a bit taken aback by the variations in climate in such a small geographic area.

Ephrata is about 20 miles north of Moses Lake, which puts it smack in the middle of the high desert scrub. (In fact, the tagline under the Welcome to Moses Lake sign says, “The Desert Oasis.”) I am not sure what the residents of Ephrata do for a living. It’s a stop on Amtrak’s Empire Builder line, and you can’t swing a cat without hitting a church, but I didn’t see much in the way of industry. I suppose most of the residents work in Moses Lake.

I had made reservations to stay at an AirBnB in the town of Soap Lake, which is about three miles from Ephrata and even less populated. I’ve stayed in half a dozen AirBnB accommodations in the past year or so. With the exception of the one in Edinburgh, whose owners were not forthcoming about the fact that the apartment was located at the top of a narrow circular stone staircase dating back to the 1300s, my AirBnB experiences have all been positive. This one was very comfortable, but finding the actual location was a bit hairy.

I need to back up and mention that this past weekend was also Gonzaga Alumni Weekend. DD#2 planned to attend, so I took advantage of the opportunity to haul some of her belongings over to her. We had dinner together in Spokane Thursday night, which meant I arrived in Moses Lake around 7 p.m., just after the sun had set. Soap Lake is a straight shot up Highway 17, but I was driving in unfamiliar territory and there is nothing out there. Nothing. I live in the middle of nowhere and am used to it, but that was a bit disconcerting. I had put the address of the AirBnB into Google Maps, but when I arrived in Soap Lake, I discovered that all the roads in the part of town where I was staying (“town” being a generous description) were under construction, with sign after sign saying “Road Closed.” I finally got to the correct street—and Google Maps helpfully intoned “Your destination is on the right”—but I found myself sitting in the middle of a torn-up road with lots of dark houses and no visible house numbers.

I phoned the homeowner and explained my dilemma. He guided me to the guest suite, which was located on top of a garage, accessed from an alley between two streets. I still don’t know how the numbering system works in that part of town, as the house appeared to be on the alley, not on the street with the given address. And once I parked the car, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to get to the stairs that led to the guest suite. Thankfully, the suite was warm and cozy, with a queen-sized bed, a bathroom, and small room with a washer/dryer combo, microwave, and mini-fridge.

This was my view the following morning:

The retreat did not start until 10 a.m. on Friday, which gave me time to drive back down to Moses Lake, put diesel in the car, and find a Starbucks. The suite had one of those pod coffee makers, but it had no directions (nor could I find any on the internet), and the cup of coffee I did manage to make was pretty anemic. I had brought oatmeal and peanut butter with me for breakfast, but even though the suite had a microwave, there were no bowls or utensils and nothing in which to heat up water.

[All of this is going in my review, trust me. And I have now added some sporks and a Thermos to the bug-out bag I carry in my car in case I have to go camping again.]

Our retreat was held in a public meeting room at one of the county offices. The room was big, with lots of lighting and electrical outlets. I got myself situated at a table and introduced myself to the other women. There were about a dozen of us. I was the only one from out of state. Everyone else was from the area. My table-mate, Kathy, was from Wenatchee, an hour away. Charisma really outdid herself—each of us was given a goodie bag chock full of patterns, fabric, and notions:

We got darling hand-made name tags:

Charisma is a wonderful teacher. She is calm and patient and encouraging and she has a great sense of humor. I really enjoyed the stories she told us about her life and how she accidentally fell into this career. We had been told to bring projects to work on and I think every one of us came with an overly-ambitious stack of them. Kathy, the lady next to me, brought a quilt she had started 20 years ago. The blocks only needed to have the embroidery done. She got them all finished on Friday.

We were an industrious group:

I had no idea what to expect, being rather a newbie at this, so I hauled half a dozen projects with me. As it turned out, I ended up working most on the wool penny project I started last winter. I had almost abandoned it—I used fabric glue to attach the wool pennies to the piece of linen, and when the glue dried, it was next to impossible to get a needle through the layers—but I decided that even if I don’t completely finish it, it would serve as a good practice piece and a sampler of stitches. Charisma came around every so often to demonstrate a technique, and then she would say, “Now do this on one of your wool pennies.” That was exactly the kind of structure and leading I needed.

[I had been floundering a bit because most embroidery patterns are incredibly vague and assume a level of knowledge about materials that I didn’t have. Charisma gave us a solid grounding in needle types and sizes and thread types and sizes—and had piles of different kinds for us to experiment with—and that made a huge difference in my comfort level as the weekend went on. I am one of those people who needs to know what the rules are before I can start breaking them.]

In between working on the wool pennies, I also played around with the rooster motif from the old Anchor book. (I found myself referring to that book fairly often throughout the weekend because it had a lot of not-vague information in it.) I like the rooster, but after I put those French knots on its head, everyone thought it looked more like a peacock:

I am calling it a show chicken. I still have to finish its leg(s).

I enjoyed the whole weekend. I learned a lot, made some new friends, and ate a ton of good food. Two of Charisma’s friends made the lunches and dinners on Friday and Saturday. Each meal featured a meat entree, several salads (pea salad! I love pea salad!) and dessert. The retreat didn’t end until Sunday afternoon, but I had to get back to Montana. I left Soap Lake Sunday morning, stopped in Spokane to transfer all of DD#2’s stuff from my car to her car, and got home around dinner time. Charisma is talking about having another retreat in the spring. I’d like to go to that one, too, if it works out.

I’ve got work to do this week. I want to get the last batch of tomato sauce done today and then I need to finish the new BSKD website. Elysian and I are going to the Farm and Food Expo in Spokane in a few weeks and that should be the last of my road trips until Thanksgiving unless I have to take the BMW back to the dealer for the recall work, but I am hoping I can roll that into the Thanksgiving trip.