So here it is. The story of the retreat with Cookie A, presented by Knits by the Sea, held at Long Beach Lodge. Above pictured is a big pile of Sweet Georgia yarn. Each of the retreat's participants received a skein of this yarn. Can you imagine how difficult it is to choose from dozens of colours? Solids or varigated? light or dark? I hemmed and hawed for about fifteen minutes over which one I wanted. I ended up with something called Dark Olive or Deep Olive or something like that. It's a pretty safe gift-sock-giving colour.

Here is the room we had the retreat in, this is just before the first morning before we really got going (read: before coffee kicked in).

 I sat near the front, of course. Just here Cookie had plopped down a whole bunch of the socks she has knit to use as examples. There were really a lot.

 Here she is telling us how lines can flow smootly in from ribbing to a pattern.

 She gave us (lent, really) a stitch dictionary to pick a pattern from and then design a rib to flow into it. Our choices were either Japanese or German (there may have been one or two English books but I didn't see them). Let me tell you how what a challenge it is to read stitch patterns in a foreign language. It takes a bit of finagling.

Here is another diagram of the lines she was talking about. Apparently how the knitted line sits depends on which side of the knit stitch the purl stitch falls. 

 O look! It's Ellie. And other gals!

Another view of the attendees. 

 A German stitch dictionary. This is not the pattern I went with but I may give it a go someday.

 This was cool! I was going through my Knit. Sock. Love. book and saw that several of the socks in the book were right there in front of me! Now I don't want to get in trouble for reproducing any copyrighted pictures so I'll just stick up a couple (and if I do get in trouble, I'll gladly take them down). It was just SO COOL. 

The evening of the first day of the retreat, participants were invited to the Wine & Cheese in the Great Room at Long Beach Lodge. We started with wine and cheese. 

But there was also bread and crackers. What I didn't get photos of were there rest of the platters that seemed to keep on coming. The three pizzas. The chips and dip. The mussels and clams. More cheese. We weren't able to put a dent in the later dishes because there was SO MUCH FOOD.

Here is Ellie, our illustrious hostess, thanking us all for coming.

Morning of day 2, this is what showed up in our retreat room.

Here are all our socks on display. We started these all on the Saturday and were given homework: knit 1-3 inches before Sunday morning. (This was loosely assigned; for some of us there was no way that much knitting was going to happen). After we'd gotten into socks we designed ourselves (with the help of the stitch dictionaries) we gathered to talk about them. But really what happened was Cookie told us about them. Boy o boy can she ever read a sock. 

Quite a few of the participants had Cookie pose for a photo holding their sock.

So I'm realizing this isn't a great retelling of what happened. Here is more detail:

Dan dropped me off and I headed straignt for the coffee. I was really hoping Long Beach Lodge would have good coffee. I sure needed good coffee. See, the night before I went to stitch night at the yarn shop. Normally Knits by the Sea's stitch night is on Wednesday but Ellie moved it to the Friday night before the retreat. It was quite a lively stitch night. I even had wine. Two glasses in fact. What the heck, said I, I wasn't driving. It sure was fun. But the next day, having had two glasses of wine that probably had sulfites in them, I remembered that I am on antibiotics and that mixing cloxacillin with alcohol is a BAD idea. I started feeling really ill about an hour into the lesson.

I excused myself from the table and went off to one of the comfy chairs along the side of the room. I was shaking and nauseous; I was worried that I was going to pass out. (I have a history of passing out.) Ellie, ever the gracious hostess, made me some peppermint tea. Someone went to their hotel room and grabbed me some Gravol for the nausea.

I persisted with our knitting activity because dammit, I paid my money and I was determined to have a good time, illness be damned. We all figured that lunch would help me to feel better. It did. I had the salad and the burger. The salad was great. The burger was disappointing. But I felt much better for having eaten.

Then when we were in our afternoon session, the Gravol kicked in. Here I started feeling really dumb because now, even though I was not nauseous, I had a hard time staying awake. Turns out that after that heavy lunch, I was not the only one. (Most of the other particpants had fish & chips).

After our first day we all felt a bit pelted with information, but pelted in a good way. We all had lots to think about. But we sashayed ourselves over to the Great Room for the neverending stream of food that was the Wine and Cheese event. Cookie A signed all our books, there were photos, conversations, knitting, and a bright setting sun shining into everyone's eyes through the massive picture window at Long Beach Lodge.

Ellie had Faye looking after the shop while we were at the retreat, so when the shop closed, Faye joined us. After Wine and Cheese, we had no idea how we would fit in dinner. We joked that we four of us (me, Ellie, Faye, Cookie A) could share a salad. We headed off to Shelter where we met with Stellar Coffee gals.

With respect to those at the table, I'll simply say our conversation was under the rose. It was riotous good fun and the food good. I just has a Caesar salad, I couldn't even finish that.

That was the end of a long but good first day.

The second day we worked on our socks some more, had some more treats, shared contact information, took lots of group photos. The poor hotel gal - we called her in to take our group photo and she had a line of something like eight cameras and two iPhones to take photos with. I opted to get photos from others, and Ellie has posted them on the Knits by the Sea Facebook page. 

Cookie had to rush off and catch a ferry (she had flown to Seattle earlier in the week, taught there, then rented a car and drove up. It took about eight hours from Seattle), so we dispersed quickly when it was time to say goodbye.

When I got home, I was absolutely at loose ends (no pun intended) about what knitting project to work on next. I have something like seven sock projects now that are 20-50% done.

O well. It was a good weekend and we were already talking about who to get next year. Alana Dakos? Spilly Jane?

what a weekend!

Photos will have to wait until I have a bit more time and attention span. Suffice it to say, it was a full busy weekend with yarn and knitting and socks and Cookie A and learning how to design stuff. I now look at knit stitches in an entirely new way. Ellie fed us very well via Long Beach Lodge and we were really spoiled rotten. It was a great weekend and I made some great new friends. We are already talking about who we might get next year. Alana Dakos? Spilly Jane? (Those are my votes...)

Real People Read My Blog!

Some weeks ago I passed along the URL for this blog to someone I work with. Most people I know aren't blog readers so when I say "I have a blog!" I fully expect rolling eyes. But my coworker acknowledged having read it and said "do you write about everything?"

Um...

Well yes, yes I do. Some of it goes here. What I can't put here, either lives in my head or goes in my journal.

See, I love to write and I love to share stuff. I also happen to think I'm hilarious. Some things I would love to write about are simply not appropriate for a public audience. I would love to tell you about lots of the stuff that happens at work but I signed some confidentiality thingy and I live in a small town. But twenty years from now you can bet some of these stories will surface in short stories and novels.

But maybe he meant every topic. I mean, if I'm going to write about catheters, for crying out loud. there are no limits to the things I'll write about. Well, as you can see by the lengthy list over there --------> you can see there are many topics I can go on and on and on about. They always say "write what you know" and that's what I'm doing. I write about what I experience, what I think about, and sometimes I throw in stories.  I even write about my knitting on occasion.



OH speaking of knitting, I'm going to tonight's Knit Night in Tofino (yes, going to Tofino for the second time today), and will spend tomorrow and half of Sunday at Long Beach Lodge learning from the master, Cookie A, on designing.  So it's possible and even likely my next few posts will be about knitting.

turns out, I just need to eat more or, the embarrassment post

Well I am embarrassed.

I saw the doctor on my birthday. Went on about how I got sick and never felt like I recovered, still coughing, sore throat, etc., and oh yeah I've lost 24 pounds in the last three months. She looked at me. BINGO. (She didn't say that. Doctors don't know what bingo is.) She figures the reason my body wasn't letting me get better was because my body wasn't getting enough calories to recover. That certainly explains my high level of fatigue. She also pointed out that I'm probably cold all the time too (why yes!) So there it was, my doctor told me I should eat more cake on my birthday, and that I should slow down my weight loss program (from two pounds a week to a pound and a half or just a pound).

On that note, a couple of pounds ago I came down into the "normal" range of the BMI. That sure feels good. I have a growing stack of pants I can't wear anymore. I told a friend on Skype today that I'm shrinking out of my bras. We commiserated that the breasts are always the first to go when we lose weight. I also have more and more clothes I can fit into.

Here is something else that is a bit embarrassing. When I was doing laundry yesterday (I have energy to do laundry again!), I realized that I have five lime green tops. Five. I knew I liked this colour, and to be fair, two of them were gifts, but gosh it sure still seems like a lot.

LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt

Yes, that was a total non sequitur, but LouiseJHunt seems to be mentioning me on every podcast (more embarrassment) so perhaps I should respond in kind by mentioning her in every blog post? Louise's podcast, by the way, is the Caithness Craft Collective Podcast out of northeast Scotland. It doesn't seem to matter what Louise talks about, I just like hearing her talk in the Caithness dialect. Thanks for the birthday wishes Louise! (btw, the word you were looking for was not 'humbleness' but humility, I think) (Okay I am listening to the Sneeze episode as I'm writing this post. Total multi-media junkie am I).

Tomorrow Dan & I will hit the road at 5am to reach French Creek for an 8am offload. Oh yeah, I still work at my fish counting job! There is a fairly large offload they need a hook-and-line validator for, and they need a second person to tag the halibut, so Dan and I will go. It's a long way but we'll be paid for our time and per kilometer (.43/km) as well as the time we are working. Working with My Sweety! A road trip! A trip into Town! Depending on how tired we are, I might be able to convince Dan to stop in at the Port Alberni Hops Festival on the way back (sorry, can't seem to find a website to link to).

Last bit of news: I am on sock #5 - I was shooting for seven before Cookie A comes next weekend but it was just too ambitious a goal. That's okay though, that means I'll have only five partners to knit after the retreat and that means I can move onto other projects. As ever, I have a long queue of things I want to knit!

Cookie A sock #3

I started this one with high hopes. It was basically knit in stockinette and garter with short row shaping, which didn't actually take that long. I *love* this yarn and thought this would be the perfect pattern for it. But by the time I turned the heel, my hands started hurting (I went with a needle size smaller than the pattern recommends, so I was knitting with 2.0mm) so I put it down for a few days and worked on a dishcloth on 5.0mm needles. I found I didn't miss this sock and really had to kick myself in the butt to get it going again, but I did because I need to finish it. Ellie has ideas for her display so I want to help get as many socks going as possible! I'm right on schedule with my big plan, I have just under four weeks now to finish the next four socks. I think #4 will go fast, it looks like an easy and addictive pattern. I'll tell you about it later.

Cookie A socks #1 & #2

As I might have mentioned once or twice, Cookie A is coming to Tofino in April to lead us in a retreat, and I am endeavouring to knit as many of her socks as I can between now and then. I was home sick from work on Monday & Tuesday, and was able to finish two of the socks I was working on. Here they are: 

Eunice is green, Cauchy is in browns. Their partners will be knit in April, after the retreat.

This week: on/off the needles/hook

The BMW and Dan's birthday sock combo. Turned the heel, and am just about ready to start the intarsia for the BMW logo. This ain't gonna be easy...

 For some reason I can't get text into the Sideways Single Crochet Scarf. I finished it last night, added tassels this morning. I have a sensitivity to wool against the skin around my neck, so I'm not sure I'll actually be able to wear it.

The next photo is the Candy Poncho, on which I have not made much progress in the last week. 

Two photos above is the Brother Amos Hellfire Lace sock pattern using Malabrigo sock yarn. A pattern from Brenda of Cast On, I started these in, Oh, I don't remember now, August? And I really need to get back to them. At the very least, because I need the needles for other projects.

And last, is a pair of stranded mittens using pink silk/merino and white aran wool. The first one fits my right hand perfectly, I did the top decrease to exactly fit the shape of my pinky finger and then the rest of the fingers. The second one... well you know how it is when you are making up a pattern as you go, finish one thing of the pair, and then weeks pass before you get to the second one. Then you wish you had made notes at least for how many stitches to cast on... So the mitt on the right will be frogged this week and then restarted. I hope it happens this week. I want to get most of these projects finished inside this month so I can spend February and March knitting Cookie A socks in preparation for the Cookie A Sock Retreat in Tofino in April. Haven't yet decided what patterns to knit but I have a lovely selection of sock yarn to choose from.