Remembering one fall retreat, and my growing excitement for another

Good morning and happy Saturday! Four years ago on Labor Day Weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the West Coast Men’s Fall Knitting Retreat for my first time. Until then, I had only attended the Spring retreat here in New York. I had a fantastic time at that retreat and met a number of friends in person who up until that point I had only known online. Many of those same guys are back in Seattle again as that retreat is happening again this weekend. I have been enjoying the pictures and posts on Facebook, and I am hoping I get the opportunity to join them again some time soon.

Here at home I am getting ready for our first Northeast Men’s Fall Knitting Retreat which is just under three weeks away. I have been making a pile in the corner of my craft room of things that I will need to bring with up to the Easton Mountain Retreat Center. There are project bags for everyone attending, and notebooks, and knitting notions to go in every bag. I have all the supplies for the morning and afternoon demonstrations/discussions at our “expert tables” that we will have on Friday in lieu of the more structured workshops we have at the spring retreat. My topics will be card weaving and continuous thread weaving.

I had dabbled a little bit in card weaving prior to the West Coast retreat I attended in 2014. Having met John Mullarkey at that retreat and sitting through the card weaving workshop he led at that retreat pushed me permanently down that rabbit hole. I am far from an expert, but I am confident in what I do know of the technique to lead a small demonstration at my expert table, and hopefully encourage more guys to give it a try. The same goes for continuous thread weaving. I am by no means an expert on this technique, but I find it fascinating, and like card weaving, I believe I know enough to at least demonstrate the basics on both a triangle and rectangle frame loom.

This will be slightly smaller than the spring retreat, but it should be no less of an amazing experience all around for everyone. Our group field trip on Saturday will be to the Adirondack Wool and Arts Festival at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Greenwich. I know that many of the guys coming to the retreat will be travelling some distance to attend. I need to make sure to remind the guys travelling by plane, train, or bus to leave room in their suitcases for whatever they may want to buy. At past spring retreats I have even helped coordinate packing and shipping things for a few guys who had too much to pack in their luggage. I imagine we will be doing some more of that at this retreat.

We currently have 28 guys registered, and registration will stay open for this retreat for I think another week. If you have thought about attending but have not registered yet, please do so as soon as possible as time is running out.

That’s about all I have for this morning. I have a long long list of outside work to get started on today. At the top of that list is cleaning the pool. I am usually getting ready to close it on Labor Day weekend but this year I am going to try and keep it open a little longer as we still have days in the forecast where I know we are going to need it. Unfortunately, I have neglected the pool over the last couple of weeks and it has developed a little bit of an algae problem that I need to address.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!