We’re here! The final stop on the Craft Napa blog hop for the $500 eQuilter gift certificate! (Who doesn’t want to win $500 worth of fabric around the holidays?!)

I invite all to share a response below, and I will collect the comments from all the Craft Napa blog posts, including this one, and announce the randomly selected winner tomorrow.

I am incredibly honored by everyone who has faith in me and is joining this inaugural Craft Napa event next month!

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To that end, I am working as best I can to make it a success. It has meant a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, taking into consideration what is currently available in the market, including online instruction.

It means I am constantly asking the question: What do people yearn for out of a live, in-person gathering in the year 2016?

Getting personal…

Moving back to Northern CA, specifically Napa, has been nothing less than a stunning decision to me. And I mean that in the truest sense–a deer-in-the-headlights kind of stunning. I moved away a long time ago. I was 17 years old when I went to college in Boston. I am now 44. Chronologically speaking, I have been away more than I have been home.

Life events have ultimately brought me back.

Now that I think of it, Napa had left an indelible imprint just before I left the Bay Area in 1989. I grew up about 25 miles from Napa, and my high school offered a small weekend retreat in Napa County chaperoned by our class dean and a few other teachers. The house where we stayed was an old, drafty Victorian-style home painted lemon yellow with white trim, situated in a hilly countryside adorned with rows and rows of dormant grapevines. It was the stark of winter, but it was lush and green, frosty and cold.

It was invigorating.

I remember long talks with a trusted teacher at the retreat, discussing life’s possibilities. On the final morning, just before boarding the van to go home,  I thought: this is it. This is the most beautiful place on earth. And I asked myself: What is possible?

 

Winter Napa

And now, I ask myself that question again in my mid-40’s. Given life’s opportunities, given disappointments and loss, given mistakes and triumphs, given everything that has led me here– to Napa–what is possible?

I pose the question to you:

For you in 2016: What is possible?

Comment away!

And for those coming to Napa next month, I cannot wait to share this magical place with you…

Wine train