Knitting Retreat

On Saturday, one of my knitting groups (Frog Pond Fiber Arts) sponsored a Day Retreat. It was held in the South Dining Hall on the Notre Dame Campus. Although it was cold and snowy, it was definitely warmer than it had been all week. It was held from 10 am to 5pm and included lunch in the Dining Hall.

I had a blast. It was so much fun, that I didn't want it to be over. We had 2 vendors come to sell there wares. I bought 2 skeins of merino/silk fingering weight yarn. The first will be for socks, but the other I think will be for a shawl.

We held 3 classes throughout the day. The first was Knitting Backwards; done so you don't have to keep turning your work. I have really been interested in doing this and had actually been able to do the knit stitch on my own; once. Jessica also taught us how to do Purl backwards also. Here is the dishcloth I made.

I even bound off going backwards!

The other 2 classes were held after lunch, which I just have to describe. It was unbelievable! Our admission price included lunch in the Notre Dame Dining Hall, which I must say has got to have the largest buffet I have ever seen. They had everything imaginable: 15+ different dry cereals, bagels, muffins, pancakes, omelet station, belgum waffles, bacon, sausage, pizza, 5 different pastas with your choice of sauces, roasted chicken, ribs, fish, 2 or 3 salad bars with every topping imaginable, hummus, corn casserole, cooked vegies, fresh fruit, yogurts, danishes, donuts, ice cream, frozen yogurt and probably 30 fountain pop machines. That's probably only a drop in the bucket of what they had, but I was so overwhelmed, I know I missed some stuff.

After lunch Vicki taught lace class (which I took) and Janet taught a woven triangular shawl. Here is the shawl I began, but I as SOOO NOT liking the colors that I am going to rip it and redo it. I'll probably use the blue/purple yarn (pictured above) that I got from one of the vendors, but I may look for something a little heavier maybe DK weight.

Here are a Carol and Jessica learning how to weave on Janet's looms.

Aubrey and I worked on our Thrummed Mittens. We were hoping to get our mitten #2's done so we could wear them for the walk back across campus to our cars. Didn't happen though. We BOTH made mistakes, which resulted in frogging. Aubrey wanted to do kitchener grafting on hers like I did and to make hers longer. She had already ripped it back before she got there. So she knit it back up and was ready to cut her yarn to start the kitchener, when she discovered that she hadn't made it long enough; I think it was one thrum row shorter then her other one. So she had to rip back again. On mine, I didn't read the instructions thinking I knew what I was doing since I had already finished mitten #1. Well, I was just about to cut my yarn to do the kitchener grafting when I realized I had 2 righthand mittens. I put the thumb hole in the wrong spot! Luckily all I had to do was frog back the mitten top shaping (about 13 rows) and move the decreases to another location. I think Aubrey finished hers on Saturday night, but I finished mine on Sunday afternoon.

I have more photos on Flickr and I will be uploading them to our Frog Pond Group Page.