Knitters Review Retreat

Well, I'm home from the wonderful Knitters Review Retreat. It was WONDERFUL this year too, even better because my friend, Judy, came with me.

I met a lot of great new friends, and hope to hear from them in the next few weeks.

Let me see if I can get some pictures posted....

This is our lovely hostess, Clara - she organizes this retreat, with help of course!

She's the author of several books on yarn & wool, and is just an all around wonderful person. She's very warm, and genuinely excited and happy to welcome both returning attendees and new people each year.

There were 120 attendees this year, 10 more than last year. And while I enjoyed the entire retreat, I always enjoy the Thursday Extension best - about half the number of people, it's so much easier to talk to people, get to know them better, before the rest of the attendees arrive, and it's just much more crowded and busy. Still loads of fun, of course, but I really enjoy the more intimate setting of smaller groups of people on Thursday.

I didn't take very many pictures, but here's some amusing pictures of Judy with her stash (acquired both at Webs and at the Knitters Review Retreat, some free from the Stash Lounge, some purchased from the vendors):

more stash acquisition! And YES - she had to do a lot of packing & rearranging before she could sleep in the bed that night!! Luckily, we managed to get everything back into the car, without it exploding!

Judy also brought her spinning wheel, and did some spinning during parts of the Retreat.

The last day of the Retreat, we all gather together, and "marry" our New Beginnings project - this is a project that we bring that has to be for ourselves (it's very common for most knitters to knit only for other people, and rarely for themselves). Clara leads us in a commitment ceremony to our New Beginnings project (she usually posts the "vows" on her website later, so I'll have to link to them once she has them posted). Then we all cast on the projects together, then walk around and have others that we've met and enjoyed cast on some stitches on the project - it lets you have a wonderful memory built into the project - with many different people's cast ons on your project.

This year, I've started the Cabled Cardigan from Runway Knits. The yarn is Cascade Venetzia, in the lavender colorway, the color of the yarn at the top of the page.