PNB INDO ADVENTURES: Thanksgiving Day

Catching up on posting this:
My group of crafty ladies decided to celebrate American Thanksgiving on November 24. There are only a few Americans in my group so most of the group had never experienced an American Thanksgiving. One of our newer members from the US wanted to host the event. Everyone brought something. We had 2 turkeys but also dishes from Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Denmark, Brazil, The Netherlands, and Iran. I'm sure I'm forgetting a country or two. We had too many desserts: Red velvet cheesecake cake ( layer of cheesecake and layers of red velvet cake enrobed in a white chocolate ganache, pumpkin pie, pumpkin roll, a nut bread, chocolate mousse cake. I won't even begin to list the side dishes.

Our hostess set a lovely table (or rather 2 tables) as there were 16 of us at the lunch.

Just a portion of the food

Folks at work were asking B what we were doing for Thanksgiving. He said I was having a fabulous meal and that he was probably having instant Mie noodles. Note: I brought him an array of leftovers for a nice meal as well. I even brought some dessert for him.

We got started on our celebrating at 9 am. Everyone delivered their items to the kitchen and then quite a few of us had a workshop in knitting socks "toe-up." Most of the ladies that knit had always knitted them top-down. After seeing several of us knitting "toe-up", Danielle was kind enough to teach a class. I have knitted a bunch of socks this way but there are always issues so a refresher was in order.

So much concentration...

And helping others...

I helped some of the ladies with the cast on. I have that solidly nailed down.

Sock update: Several of the ladies have finished 2 socks already! Mine are about a third completed.

There was a lot of eating and a lot of posing for photographs. Actually it was a 5-hour photoFEST. Here's the entire group after lunch!

This Thanksgiving celebration was also a chance for all of us to formally say goodbye to 3 of our members who are moving on: L TO R Joy, Penny and Stephanie. As has become tradition when members of long standing depart, we have all come together to create paper-pieced tiny squares which are then put into a pattern around a center embroidered piece by one of our members. The mini-quilts are then framed. Each one really gets personalized. You can see the one on the left is more pastels for example. We had to do these in a rush and after first call I actually made 10 of the squares. There are 2-3 in each of these and the rest went into the "extras" with blocks that arrived too late. We have a start on the next mini-quilt already. No one else is leaving that we know of in the near future.

One of these ladies left last weekend, one next weekend and the third will depart right after the first of the year. I will miss then all tremendously. Terrific ladies.