Sorry for the long delay in posting. As it turned out, internet access was only available in the mansion and the conference center and we were kept so busy it turned out there was precious little time for blogging. In addition, I woke up Saturday morning with a scratchy throat, by the time we were back on the mainland in the afternoon I had a fever which made me pretty miserable all the way to Portland where we spent the night. We got home yesterday afternoon and I spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch, knitting only when the fever abated. I feel a bit better today, but the coughing is getting worse. On top of that, Mark is gone this week and the kids and I have another trip on Thursday! This April is one of the busiest in a very long time.
Without further ado, here's post #1 of this incredible sock camp where I met some amazing people and some some incredibly gorgeous knitwear. It started with a dessert reception in the mansion Tuesday night. At the reception we received our goody bags which contained the items in the photo above, plus a chicken chucker (went straight to Ryan) and some very odd gum. This colorway is called Cockamamie and I just love it!
The next morning, the shop opened and was just about cleaned out in a matter of hours. You should have seen the yarn piles in some people's arms! My take home yarn was rather less than most, but I did get some heavy weight STR to try (I love it!), got a couple of mill ends, some lightweight and medium weight STR and Stephanie's new book (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off). I also got a couple of new sock patterns.
Campers were divided into four different tribes. Mine was called the Dixie Chicks and we started right off with a session with Cat Bordhi. Having just seen her and learned her new techniques, I got started rather quickly. Cat is a real crack-up and kept the ladies entertained the whole time. Here she is explaining how to do Judy's Magic Cast On for toe up socks.
After a (very quick) lunch we had our second session with Tina (dyer extrordinaire for Blue Moon). We learned all about color and dyeing techniques.
In this class we played with pastel chalks and then knit a swatch using various colors and textures of yarn. We also talked about this amazing colorwheel of socks.
The Chicken contest requires a whole post, so look for that coming up. I need to rest!