Retreating to Homer

Our knit group took a walk on the wild side and held our fall retreat at a new venue out of town. Once in a while it's fun to shake things up a little. With the complicity of Dawn, temporarily located in the end-of-the-road community of Homer, Alaska, we booked accommodation at a beachside lodge that's part of the venerable Driftwood Inn.

After a brief game of musical lodges, we settled into the Seaside Lodge, which proved to be the perfect place for us. We filled only two of its rooms, but owing to the late season had the huge common area to ourselves.

Lots of comfy seating, lots of light flooding through huge windows, splendid view of Katchemak Bay outside those windows. An ideal place for hours of knitting!

And even better during the daytime was the sunny deck:

If you're not familiar with the local climate, you may not appreciate how extraordinary was the warmth and sunshine. It could just as easily have been raining sideways, in which case the retreat would have to retreat indoors with our wine and chocolate. (Still not a bad option, see lodge common room above.)

We had visits from local Homer knitting groups, which were such fun we forgot to take pictures. We had al fresco meals:

Visits to the nearby yarn store, KnittyStash,

great meals, and many, many laughs.

The clear weather meant that one evening a giant "hunter moon" was rising over the mountains to the east:

while the sun set behind Mt. Augustine volcano in the west:

By Sunday evening, though, change was in the air. Clouds were moving in, and the wind was up.

And we awoke Monday morning to a different world:

Yup. It SNOWED. Hardy Alaska Woman Judy dashed out to rescue a cushion from the deck:

and we cleaned up, packed up, warmed up the cars, and departed over the mountains toward home, still laughing:

The Retreat Goes Forward

Friends, has this ever happened to you? You make meticulous plans for a project, let's say just for a random example, banging out a sweater at a weekend knitting retreat. You print out your pattern, order and receive your yarn from exotic foreign sources, swatch, assemble correct needles plus extras just in case, add measuring, cutting, and sewing tools. You pop it all in a bag and haul it off to said retreat.

That was me this weekend, all geared up to #bangoutablaer. (See previous post for all the sweater-banging-out background.) I cast on the minute I arrived at the cabin, and by Friday evening had made excellent progress, to wit: the contrast neck band and lace section.

It may not look like much to you, but lace doesn't get banged out quickly. In fact, some of the lace areas had to be knitted more than once. Let's just say that liquor and lace are not an ideal combination for fast progress. Well, fast and correct progress, anyway.

This being a top-down yoke cardigan, what followed on Saturday was a whole lot of horizontal knitting as the number of stitches expanded for shoulders. At one point there were 300+ stitches per row. By Sunday morning, the yoke was all banged out, sleeve stitches separated and held, then the fronts and back joined for the body of the sweater.

After that, it's just straight back and forth stocking stitch down to the contrast bands that finish off the bottom of the body. By the time I headed home, I had added about another inch to what you see in the photo above and was mightily pleased with myself. The hard, fiddly part was all banged out and the rest would be plain, if fine gauge, sailing.

And Then. And then I check my email when I get home and OMG at the top of the pile is a cheery note from Ravelry inviting me to download a revised corrected version of a pattern in my library--BLAER! Consternation is the polite word for what I felt. Deep, screaming, table-pounding consternation.  From the peak of self-congratulatory progress to the weedy bottom of the Slough of Despond.  Instead of banging out a few more rows before bedtime, I had to compare new and old pattern versions to figure out what had changed. (Note to Ravelry: you might want to help a knitter out by highlighting changed text in a new pattern version. Just sayin'.) Good news/bad news is that I can't find anything different in the size I'm making after (bad news) spending an hour comparing old and new. If something's off in the lace chart--pffft! I've done it and it looks ok, and I'm not going back there. I'm banging on undeterred.

But back to the retreat. As always, it was a joy to be with the amigas, eating delicious meals

Grilled fresh halibut, Mexican spoon bread, and salad, for example, drinking various potations, eating chocolate, soaking in the hot tub, and knitting, knitting, knitting.

Here are the members of our merry band:

Judy, in her regular clothes, banging out a beautiful green Aran sweater.

 Anne, our super host, banging out a Rowan denim gansey.

Jere, showing off her first pair of socks on her beautiful pointed Pilates toes.

Linda, who not only crocheted a scarf, but learned to knit!

Camden working on her heirloom Kaffe Fassett sweater.

You guys are all so beautiful and skilled!

And though we were inside knitting knitting knitting, browsing, and sluicing a lot, we did pop outside from time to time to admire King Mountain across the valley still wearing a lot of its winter snow

and watch the tiny new leaves emerge. They seemed to visibly expand by the hour.

Full Retreat

I'm just back from another wonderful weekend knitting retreat with my knitting group at an Undisclosed Location in the Alaska wilderness. For the most part, What Happens at Knitting Retreat Stays at Knitting Retreat, but I think it's ok if I show you one thing:

A display of Hats for Huts created or donated by/to our group for the auction. How could you possibly acquire for your very own one of these exquisite chapeaux, you ask? Come to the group's annual meeting. Bid often and fiercely! You could get yourself a Sixareen Kep or an Alaska Punk hat. Or one of many, many more amazing, delightful, and cosy hats. But especially the Sixareen or the Punk or the Fornicating Moose. I'm just sayin'.  Hey, it's my blog and I can shill if I want to.

Now a lot of people might think that a bunch of women holed up for a weekend in a remote cabin just use knitting as an excuse to eat great food, talk all day long, laugh their tails off, and drink the odd glass of wine. Or Screech. (Check the link. That's Screech, the knitter's rum, not screech, the high pitched noise.) But I'm here to tell you that I knitted so much I got blisters! Three of them, as a matter of fact. And the ever-resourceful Ravelry has an answer for the problem. A knitted answer, of course. The Finger Protector--take a look. I'm knittin' me a fistful of those bad boys. In cashmere. My hard-working fingers deserve nothing less--and so do yours!

Booties in Retreat

 Through these portals pass the most wonderful knitters in the world!

See? The lace arrow points the way up the hill to the cabin where 8 knitters had a fabulous time knitting, drinking, eating, soaking in the hot tub, and laughing and laughing and laughing. It rained a lot, but who cares?

I reached a major landmark--the 40th and final pair of booties in the Big Mess o' Booties for my daughter's upcoming deliveries. Celebrated with an introduction to Screech, the Newfoundland rum made infamous by the Yarn Harlot. There's a quaint ceremony called the Screech-in, which involves reciting some doggerel and kissing a codfish (on the lips!). This is supposed to make one an honorary Newfoundlander. A Canadian friend recommends wearing a lot of chapstick for the fish kissing so that your lips don't taste of cod for hours afterward. Not having the required codfish, I Screeched-in the ultimate pair with a Screech and orange juice and left it at that.

By the way, in contrast to the sound of its name, Screech is an amazingly smooth rum when drunk neat. Not at all like its reputation from its early days. Long may your big jib draw!

And it didn't even rain all the time. There was a brief window in which the clouds broke apart to show what they'd been doing to the mountaintops:

Report from Knitting Group Retreat

Everything was just ducky!

She Took Her Vorpal Scissors In Hand...

It was a wonderful weekend at the knitting retreat.  We all agreed that what happens at the cabin stays at the cabin, so suffice it to say that knitting was knitted,  we supped on delicious food and fine wine, set the world to rights, and laughed our bleeps off.  Personnel present for Sunday morning wool worship:

There's Heather and Anne,  with Judy and Lupe below:

And not forgetting Teo the Wonder Dog, Scourge of the Squirrels:

A momentous event took place at the retreat, namely the Cutting of the Winter Sunset Front Steek.  Thus is made a cardigan from a knitted-in-the-round sweater with no seams:

From the bottom all the way to the top:

And voila it becomes a don-able cardigan:

The astute knitters among you and wardrobe mavens in general will notice that in spite of all the measuring, planning, counting, and miscellaneous premeditation, the sleeves are a trifle long.  Sigh.  It looks like they need to get knocked back 1 motif.  I'm going to park that problem on the back lot while I put on neck and front opening edges and decide on what, if any closures will be used.  All of those will affect fit and drape.  Then when there is a final fit I can tell for sure what I will do about the sleeves.

That's one of the magical mystery things about knitting.  You don't know exactly what kind of garment it's going to be until you cast off.