CAMP CONCORD

SUNDAY, MAY 29, 2011

CAMP CONCORD

On May 10-15,2011 I joined a group of women called the "Happy Quilters" in Lake Tahoe, CA for a sewing/quilting retreat at Camp Concord. Even though I didn't know a soul, my dear friend Renee convinced me to go with her. I'm not real comfortable in situations like this, but in an effort to get to know people better, I passed out 4x6 pieces of paper that I had painted and asked people to make me a "story card" of themselves: just a brief note about who they were, what they were working on, whatever they wanted to put on it. My card had a "cartoony" face of myself with fringed fabric for hair that read "My name is Carol Suto and I'm a Thread Head from San Leandro CA. My bathroom drain got plugged and after my partner worked hours to clear it I said "Lots of hair down there, eh?" and he said "No, THREAD." From that moment on I realized that I had more thread on me than hair.

The cards that were returned to me were delightful. Some just wrote about themselves, many decorated their cards with fabrics they were working with, two ladies collaborated and collected snippets of fabrics from all 16 people who attended and put them on their card, then adorned it with beads. Peoples personalities really came to life on the cards, the wildest one being Nancy's, done on her embellisher. I treasure them all and have them in my art journal.

The biggest surprise came on Friday night when it started snowing after 3 days of 60+ degree weather. We woke up to a few inches of snow and continued snowflakes. It sure was beautiful and was a fitting climax to a great week.

T