Once we got settled into our rooms, we headed upstairs where our hostess Theresa, fellow stitchers, and goodie bags awaited. The hotel provided us with a lovely and huge room for our weekend. It had good light, and lots of space to spread out our stuff. But, since we had all heard that the one place not to be missed in Fargo is a trip to the shops at Nordic Needle we hopped right back in the car and headed into town to check it out. For the trip, we packed Carolyn and Marilyn (two of the coolest "grannies" I've met) into the back seat of the Mustang, since they hadn't gotten to go earlier in the day. Now, most of you probably don't know, but Nordic Needle has one of the best mail-order catalogs for stitching supplies going. Almost anything you could ever want is in there. Their store is exactly the same way. I have never seen such an enormous stitching store! It was dazzlingly overwhelming, but somehow, I managed to find stuff to buy. I know, you're surprised. The ladies manning the store were incredibly friendly and helpful, and we had a great shopping experience there.
Then it was back to the hotel, to settle in for a relaxing evening of stitching. We had dinner catered in from a local restaurant, and it was very, very yummy. We spent the evening sitting, stitching, watching movies and talking. A few of us went down and sampled the hottubs as well. Theresa set up shop in one corner, and I know I'm not the only one who spent way too much money buying goodies from her (because I hadn't already bought enough at Nordic Needle). It's one thing to covet this stuff over the Internet, other thing completely to actually be able to see the beautiful colors and touch the wonderful fibers. And, in addition to what we all bought, we all got fabulous goodie bags and presents (check out the bulging brown bags by everyone's feet in the pictures!). Theresa went all out to make us feel at home, and to pamper us! Check out these pictures of us lounging around, having a good time.
Theresa had planned the weekend around the dates of the Fargo Downtown Street Fair, and almost everyone went down and wandered around for a while on Saturday. The fair was a whole lot of fun, and a great chance to see downtown Fargo. It was also HUGE; we easily spent four hours there, and didn't even see everything. Carrie and I went nuts buying things again - I bought a beautiful necklace and matching earrings, and a neat knife for Wiley, and Carrie bought earrings, a picture, and a bunch of other stuff. I got to try my first corn dog ever, which is an experience I don't think I'll repeat, and we tried Dippin' Dots for the first time. Those were strange, but I'd eat them again, I think. We encountered any number of neat things, some of which, of course, needed pictures.
There was the neat donut machine, which processed donuts as if they were on a little conveyor belt of frying oil, and the world's cutest little kid's ride, which drove all over the fair
There was a statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, and the world's largest can of Budweiser, which we just had to pose in front of, since Carrie believes in getting the true tourist experience
Once we were done exploring the street fair it was back to the C'mon Inn for another evening of relaxing and stitching. There was one last place we had to visit before we could leave Fargo, and so we took a small detour to go to the Space Aliens Grill and Bar for some mid afternoon snacks. When we got back to the Inn, everyone was settled in working on their stitching, and we happily joined them. We had another yummy dinner brought in, and spent the evening hanging out. Theresa took an hour or so to give us a mini-lesson in doing our own framing, and Marleen helpfully gave us all a lesson in how to make our own cording from regular DMC floss.
And then we stitched some more. Carrie and I stayed up until at least 1:30 both nights, and I got a lot of work done on my current large project (now finished!) and had a wonderful time doing it. As a group, we all decided to participate in a round robin, and an ornament exchange. So far in the Round Robin, I've done squares for the seasons, Halloween, random holidays, and my own theme, which is snowmen. There were so many of us that we won't be done with the project until October of next year! And I can't speak for anyone else, but I got a most lovely ornament in the exchange, thanks Carolyn!
We had a gift exchange on Saturday morning, where everyone brought a little grab bag gift, we had door prizes on Saturday night, and we got a whole pile of goodies before we left on Sunday morning. Between the projects I got as part of the weekend, and all the freebies and stuff, I must have come home with 20 projects, and that's not counting all the stuff I bought too! I was so glad I had thought to pack an empty bag in my suitcase - we would have had to ship home a box if I hadn't. As it was, everything just barely fit!
Then it was Sunday morning, and time to say goodbye to all our new found friends.
We all posed for a group photo (behind us, you can see all the beautiful Shepherd's Bush pieces Theresa had done, and brought to the weekend as samples) and headed back out on the road to catch our flight home from Minneapolis.