retreat...

An invisible Red Thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance.  The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.

~ Chinese Proverb

 

 

 

 These are just some of the photos I took on while I was at the Red Thread Retreat earlier this month.  I had the most marvelous time.  I think it might have even been better than the first time I went.  

The drive is a bit difficult for me, 6 1/2 hours sitting in a car, being very focused on what I'm doing and what everyone around me is doing.  This is very difficult with a severe headache the entire time.  It is even more difficult when my squirrel brain is added to the equation.  If I could stop to take a photo every time I saw something I wanted to capture, it would take WEEKS!!  :-)

Anywho, the food was fabulous (as usual).  The weather couldn't have been more perfect and I was able to spend lots of time visiting with the trees.  That little fox photo was from pretty far away, as I was headed toward the field he was crossing for a walk.  I forgot to take my walking shoes and marching through the woods in flip-flops is really not a good idea.  So, I settled for walking around the edges of the field and woods.  I startled a foursome of does and wasn't able to get a photo of them.  But it was so nice to just watch them.  (The next day I walked past my bedroom window and saw two just a few feet from the house nipping at the grass.)

Normally, at these retreats, I come away energized, but while there quite frustrated because I'm not happy with what I create.  The first year, I made a couple of small things that I liked.  The second time I went, I came back with a few found poems I'd created and one piece of art I really loved.  This year, I had a breakthrough.

I listened to our instructor, the amazingly talented and wonderfully sweet Nina Bagley, talk about how she creates.  I watched the demonstrations and I worked.  I'd had a hard time deciding what my theme was going to be when I was ordering my supplies, but on the drive up, I realized I wanted my book to be my Red Thread book.  I wanted to document my activities at these retreats.  

I picked up lots of good tips from my friend and tablemate.  My particular favorite was how she will lay down elements that she is trying to decide on and photograph them with her phone so she can get a different perspective.  I've been doing that a lot.

I also learned how to think outside of the box when creating pages for my book. I found elements to add and worked on backgrounds.  On our last night, we all sat together and shared one page of our book and talked about what our best take-away from the retreat was.  I had a bit of a problem with this.  Not my usual problem, in that I didn't like what I'd made so didn't know what to show.  No, my problem was that I LOVED everything I'd made.  I had no idea how to choose which page to share.  When it was my turn, my friend/tablemate, announced my dilemma and asked if I could share more than one thing. :-)

I was very sad to leave the next day and I lingered as long as I could.  I was, however, very excited to get home and unpack.**  More importantly, I was excited to have spent time with a group of beautiful (inside and out), intelligent, caring, supportive, creative women.  I always come home from these retreats rejuvenated and feeling a lot better about myself.  I laughed, a lot.  I smiled, a lot.  I talked, a lot.  I was HAPPY, A LOT!!  :-)


If you ever have a chance to attend one of these retreats I highly recommend it.

I promise to show some of the pages I created in another post.

I hope you've all had a good month.  I can't believe how quickly October has flown by.  I'm very sad to see it go.

**When I arrived home I remembered that I'd signed up for Witches in Fiction and so started to work on a mixed media piece for that.  I'll have a post about that next time.

thanks for stopping by!
love & blessings
~*~