Knitting and embroidery may not be the first things you think of when you plan a beach vacation but it is for me. In fact, sometimes I plan my vacations around stitching, like I did this year.
Fiber-focused trips all started in 2005 when my husband asked what I wanted to do for my birthday. Our tradition since we started dating was the person celebrating a birthday gets to pick a trip. It started with a day, then a weekend and now we take a week off for our birthday festivus. Also now that I’m a school librarian I don’t take my actual birthday or week off but instead we use my school spring break to celebrate.
Back in 2005 I had run out of ideas so I started thinking about my passions and found an embroidery shop that was oceanfront and had a stitcher’s getaway that happened on my birthday weekend.
That first destination birthday taught me so much and expanded my needlework playbook. Never had I ever stitched on 32-count linen or with silk threads. What was this sorcery! I was hooked. Since then, I have participated in a quilt retreat, visited my favorite designer (Shepherd’s Bush in Ogden, Utah) and attended a fiber festival.
Each trip taught me something new and I have wonderful reminders of those trips. My husband has enabled me to think outside the box and travel to places neither of us thought we wanted to visit but would (and often repeatedly do) return.
One of those places is the Maryland shore, and while the shop from 2005 trip isn’t oceanfront any longer, Salty Yarns remains a special place I love returning to.
When we first started visiting this area we stayed in hotels, then we shared a rental house with family but the last few times we brought the truck camper.
Above (from left) is our campsite at Sun Outdoors Frontier Town, the view every day we drove over sand and when it got too cold or windy on the beach I just took the fun indoors.
During the trip I took a class with Jackie du Plessis, learned a new stitch and picked up some lovely new stitching treasures. Below (from left) is the ribbed spider web stitch, my table during class and how far I got in the project before we had to go home.
My favorite embroiderer on YouTube, Mary Corbet, has a great tutorial for the ribbed spider web stitch. I’ll update you on my progress as I hope to enter this in the fair this year.
So that was my destination birthday/spring break trip full of sand, stitches and stunning views. Where is your favorite fiber-related destination? Share it in the comments, adventurous stitchers want to know!
Oh and I have an extra bonus for you dear readers. To celebrate my birthday month I’m giving everyone a birthday gift in the form of a free pattern. Visit my Ravelry page to download my Learn to Knit Cowl.
Thanks for reading and celebrating another trip around the sun with me!
Yours in stitches,
Coach Dawn
