My friend Susan has sadly stopped podcasting. Well, sadly for her listeners; I think it's working out well for her. But when she still had the Knit-a-Journey podcast, she started hosting a mid-winter retreat. Some people when they think "mid-winter retreat" think of going to a warm climate; not so Susan. She decided this would be a winter retreat right here in Duluth. I blogged about the first one, which was held in 2011. I missed the second one, as I was in Kunming, China then. I went last year, when it was held in Minneapolis. And this year it happened last weekend in a house just a couple blocks from mine, here in Duluth. There were just six of us at the first retreat and this year was the first time the six of us had been together since then. We were 9 this year, so 3 more joined the original 6. It's a great group of women.
I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are a few that I did take.
On the day we arrived at the house, the heat had been turned up to 72. The whole house was too warm except for the attic and sunroom. The sunroom was also bright, so we settled in there for our first knitting session. I didn't take this photo until after the sun had gone down, and we had broken out the cheese and wine. Cheese, wine, knitting and good company-what could be nicer?
This was the view out the back door. Duluth has had a lot of snow and cold weather this year, so the snow is deep here.
I just had a few finishing touches to complete on this vest, so I finished it up out here in the sunroom.
We found the thermostat and turned the heat down for the night and the rest of the weekend, so after the first day we sat in the living room to knit.
Here, it's Susan's turn for Show-n-tell. The house had excellent wifi, so everyone was on-line for one thing or another all weekend.
Breakfast on our second morning. We had a vegan coffee cake, made by Susan and fruit smoothies made by Laurie.
We had several delicious meals during the retreat. We went to three restaurants that were all wonderful. This was my dessert at the New Scenic Cafe on the shore of Lake superior. Our meals there were wonderful. The other two restaurants we ate at were: At Sarah's Table and the Lake Avenue Cafe.
On Sunday we skyped with Louise of the Caithness craft collective podcast. Louise is in Caithness, Scotland, almost as far north as you can get in Scotland without getting in a boat. Susan introduced many of us to Louise's podcast and wanted to invite her to join us in our retreat. So here Betsey is holding Lisa's laptop so the rest of us could see Louise.
That afternoon some of us went for a hike. The temperatures in Duluth had been in the single digits above zero Fahrenheit, but on this day it got quite warm-as warm as 27 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was a nice day for hiking in the snow. The only photos I took, however were of this waterfall, which is frozen and covered in snow and you can't even tell it is a waterfall.
So that's my snapshot of the Knit-a-journey Mid-winter retreat.
2 comments:
Oh, so much fun to relive the retreat!
Thanks for the recap - and the photos!
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