Sew the word spread and the Conference grew!            

        In 2008 it was time to introduce knitting and crochet to our line up with Lily Chin as an instructor and Marci Baker from Alicia's Attic joined us with her wonderful 3D quilts and easy techniques. Marci returns this year to help us celebrate our 20th Anniversary.  This  was the year that  that we out grew the abbey and needed to move some of our classes into the college building. The classrooms there were nice and big and the light was fabulous from the large windows..  It was great fun to be able to sell Lily Chin some of her own yarn when she ran short! Of course Beverly, Ron, Bonny, ChiChi, Jackie and Diane continued with their creative classes.  We took our first group photo outside,  talk about trying to herd cats!!!  After the Conference Marci Baker was joined by Sara Nephew and the did a teacher training on their 3D system with interested Canadian Teachers.  Sara used her experience at the Abbey to develop her new book Quilts of Praise. Of course available at the Haus of Stitches. 

In 2009, much to the delight of Abbot Peter we brought the Yarn Harlot  along with some hookers who were making rugs to the Abbey, Liz Thompson from Elna joined us for the first time and Doris Fulmore introduced rug hooking while our regular instructors continued to inspire. This was the year that the abbey and college began some major renovations.  The renos to lower level of the guest wing did not quite get done in time and we needed to rearrange things a bit.  The additional bra classes moved to the college for a couple days where they revised some of the art work on the walls, so luckily we could put them back in the abbey quickly. Jodi Barrows joined us again to teach more Square in a Square techniques and caused us some excitement when she thought the smart board was a white board and wrote on it with a marker! Luckily we used our creative tricks to make all good quickly, father did have a bit of bird over it, though!   Because of the renovations to lower Severin hall we put the instructors in the old sisters residence of St. Scholastica, and did they complain at first, but not as much as they complained a couple years later when we moved them back into the guest wing, so it could not have been so bad!  Now that the Abbey renos were in full swing we started to use the college more and other parts of the abbey. We did our two evening presentation with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Jodi Barrows in the Jerome Assembly Room and were well entertained by both. Beverly brought her mom with her which also provided some entertainment and Jodi brought her son!  While Brenda was away on holidays for this Conference a couple of our knitters, Pat and Karen stepped in to help out our regular amazing hard working team!  This event has really turned into the highlight of our year allowing us to reunite with so many old friends and customers along with making new ones each year. When we look though the photos and see all the smiling faces it makes all the hard work worthwhile!