And so it begins

The retreat was wonderful. My aunt joined us this year and she and I started the yarn crawl at Commuknity, raced down 17 to Gayles for lunch and met the rest of the crawlers at The Yarn Place. We then split up again and several went to Swift Yarns while we went to The Golden Fleece. My aunt was on the hunt for Brown Sheep worsted for the Color Party Parka in Sally Melville's Book 3: Color. She had enough to start though. We all met again at Luminous Threads and then proceeded to our destination. Set high up in the Santa Cruz mountains we were well away from civilization as we knew it. For me this means, no diet coke, no computer and no TV, the latter being of no consequence whatsoever.

Like I said in my previous post I brought several projects in progress, but alas, made none on those. They didn't even make it out of my basket. I also brought a spinning wheel, but it never made it out of my car. I did however get a good start on Mavis from Naturally Noro by Jane Ellison.

Most of the knitters at the retreat are ladies in my guild. Some though are those that I see only at the retreat which is usually twice a year. So I do a little visiting and a little helping -- we all do our bit to answer questions and offer advice -- knitting or otherwise. Plus we have this elaborate gift exchange that takes a good part of one afternoon.

The real reason I didn't get much done was this swatch on the left, which is not a swatch but the umpteeth attempt to start the Vogue Twisted Float Shrug. So there I was with a friend who was starting it with me. We cast on, knit a row, then started the rounds -- but something went wrong -- I mean doesn't that sound wrong? If you're knitting in the round wouldn't you cast on, JOIN, then knit a RND? Then we were suppose to be working on the WS, you start with yarn B, then join with yarn A, so B has to be hanging around ready on the WS, however both of us had the yarn on the right side -- see the hole? You think you could get a ball of yarn through it? Frog. Start again (something was definitely wrong with row/rnd 2). We persevered and got about this far each and went on our merry way. Except the next morning I wasn't happy with it. Besides the bad start my stitches were too loose. Plus it was worked with 2 colors but the second color doesn't come back into play for several rows rnds so you have to carry it up and I didn't like how I wove it in at first. So I stopped working on it, actually, I frogged and restarted several times before I finally gave in. We packed up, had brunch (the food over the weekend was fab, btw) and finished the retreat with a final yarn crawl to Knitting Arts, who by the way was having a HUGE sale! I found a few yummy things -- my aunt found more -- and Brown Sheep to boot! But the best part was they had a completed Vogue TF Shrug. Seeing it in it's full glory made me want it more -- it also made me want to rip my meager start and start over. When I got home it occurred to me to check for errata -- sure enough there was a mistake for row/rnd 2. To the frog pond I went and this is the result. I went down a needle size and see and I even like the way I'm carrying my 2nd color (the hot pink solid) -- yup that's the wrong side you're looking at.