One of the highlights of the month was the trip that my buddy S and I took to the Maritime Fibre Retreat in Nova Scotia. It was at Oak Island Resort and we had a blast!
On the trip down we made a couple of stops. The first was at London Wul (sic) outside of Moncton. Ohhhlala! Heidi's place is crammed with all sorts of goodies of the fibre variety. I picked up and carried around a bunch of yarns and fleece before coming back to reality and putting half of them back.
When we made it to the hotel were the retreat was taking place, we quickly signed in, dropped off our bags in the room, and got straight to spinning. I hardly stopped all weekend. While I have been busy doing things, one of the things that I have not been doing (along with blogging) has been spinning. It was great to sit and spin and sip tea and chat.
S and I set up across from each other and got right to work. You can see the top part of Victoria in the photo above.
The first thing that I had to do was to ply my yarn that had been on the bobbins for a while. This is a blend of 80% merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere that I bought at the spinning retreat in the fall and dyed myself. One skein is 275 yards, the other is 146 yards.
And then I started to spin my hand dyed merino. And I spun and I spun and I spun. 241 yards and 175 yards. I even managed to ply them before the end of the weekend!
And that was a feat because there was so much going on! Spinning, of course, but also weaving on a rigid heddle loom, quilting, knitting, needle felting, tatting, and lots of hooking! There was even a woman who was doing rope work on a bottle! Did I get a picture? No. I was busy spinning.
I met Janet of High Fibre Diet. It was actually a bit of a funny moment. She was chatting away with one of her neighbours and said something about her and her mother teaching weaving, and I said "Wait a minute! Are you High Fibre Diet?" She looked at me and said "yes" and I replied "one thread two thread!" Did I get a picture? No. I was busy spinning.
At one point, there was a gathering of people looking at someone's feet. Susan's maybe? In any case, she does all of her heels like this. Pretty fancy! She described how she did it and it made sense, but did I mark it down? No. I was busy spinning.
The trip was a really good time and even better, really reasonably priced. I almost feel guilty saying that the whole thing (not including gas and all the stops along the way) was only $169. And that included the room for two nights, the fee associated with the retreat, two buffet breakfasts and one really kick-ass supper. The resort had a pool, sauna, and hot tub, all of which I made good use. The view was spectacular and the staff was great. The only one downside was that Saturday night there was an awards dinner in a conference room really close to our room. There were drunken hockey players and karaoke. Need I say more. Thankfully they finished at 1 and were all gone by about 1:20. But still.
All in all, it was a great time and I am looking forward to doing it again next year!
