OMAR

Our Mountain Art Retreat. I flew out to Houston to meet Diane. We had a lovely day together, went to a fabulous fabric store - I had to be very restrained as it had to come home on the plane with me. (I admit that was unsuccessful, Diane will mail some of my purchases on to me). We went to the Craft Museum and saw the 'Craft in America' exhibition. http://www.craftinamerica.org/?

Wonderful stuff and worthy of a visit.

The next morning we flew to El Paso to meet Rachel. Rachel drove us up to Ruidoso via 'White Sands National Park'. This place is incredible, with brilliant white sand dunes with buried trees, un-buried shrubs which look very strange. The shadows were amazing and we took loads of photos. The place is very peaceful and awesome to see. I especially loved the tire tracks, foot prints and animal tracks which were everywhere. See my Flickr pics for more.

We had a lovely three days crafting and chatting, loads of laughing. We made wild women (Sarah Lawrence) using dry felting, silk paper using silk cocoon strippings, we made collages for the CPS 7 day collage challenge. Diane taught me how to weave using a lolly stick loom, Rachel did some machine embroidery. We stayed up late and got up early to watch the deer and wild turkeys go by. We didn't see any bears. There was a little flurry of snow and Diane got very excited. The pic shows Rachel and Diane with the luggage we managed to cram into the car. Not bad considering two of us had caught flights!

Whilst we were out and about we came across this castle keep. I smiled at how historically incorrect it was, wouldn't have liked to be there in siege times, but there were loads of details which I found inspiring.

This one is the pulley holding the huge chain which in turn was holding up the not-draw bridge.

Rachel is queen of garage sailing and we managed to fit in a couple before we had to catch the plane back to Houston. We bought antique linens, broken jewelry and other stuff to be creative with. Diane took me to Joanns and Michaels on the way to the airport and I bought more great stuff, patchwork fabrics, neat crafty items and some fantastic buttons. I managed to stuff everything into my cases without busting the weight limits. I did have one bag searched, collecting the note from homeland security is a bit of a tradition. Now I just have to find a home for all my new stuff.

I had a great time and can thoroughly recomend going off on an art retreat. My inner batteries are all charged up and I am inspired to create.