Making Time

I had so much fun this weekend at the Knitting Retreat of Ravelry members; this crowd of lovely ladies:
Cniotáil

My boyfriend was a little wary: “You’re going to share a ROOM for two nights with complete strangers?” But by the end of the visit, I felt I had made great friends. I hope I can go to meet-ups in Dublin and see everyone again.

Thanks to Dearbhala (dmaxi), Suzy (SzuyMcQ) and of course, our very talented Drop-spindle guide, Diane (chixwithstix). So much work went into the preparation of this event by some very talented and busy people- who I’m sure were very busy beyond just preparing this event. But it was an excellent display of volunteer effort, with so much generosity all around. It was educational, fun, enjoyable- splendid. And it was really heart-warming, in that oh-my-god-if-i-don’t-get-a-break-soon-i’ll-collapse kinda way.

One of the ideas they thought up was a collaborative blanket to give to the hostess at Craig Country House, the gorgeous B+B. Again, so much thoughtful detail went into this. It culminated in the end of the visit.. the organisers presented the gift to the B+B hostess. It was a sweet moment. She put her hands on the side of her face… as she looked at THE FRANKENHAT! I blurted out: “That’s not your gift! Your gift is over there!”, pointing to the side table where the cute lap blanket laid. Laughs all around, because The Franken hat was looking pretty scary, and Mairead was developing a perplexed look on her face. Here was the cute blanket:

Throughout the weekend, I got alot of advice and encouragement, which is so helpful. I started a knitting project!(!) The Urchin hat! As well as the crazy Clapotis… which is naively thought was just a loads of stockinette, lol. So wrong, so wrong….

I learned to wrap stitches, drop-spindle some yarn, and I got some great yarn at the new LolaRose shop in Galway. As of this posting, it looks like they don’t have any yarn on their site, but that’s not true. They have loadsa yarn. Lola Rose Shop in Galway. I also had some bad family news when I was there, but it was really a very supportive environment.

I hope I can go next year, I’d say there’s already a waiting list forming

There’s more photos of Team Urchin and stuff on Flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/cniotail/

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.