June 28, 2012

Wanting what you get

I'm writing this post from high up in the air, as my flight goes from Seattle to Vancouver - I'll hit post when we land.  I'm looking down on the San Juan Islands and mountains, and planning my knitting for the five hour flight that comes after this one.  Over all, I'm in a pretty happy place.  I'm totally out the other side of the Gourmet retreat, and do you know, I think that crazy idea worked?   For three great evenings,  knitters knit gourmet fibres, dyed gourmet yarns, and cooked and ate gourmet foods. 

I don't know what went on in Tina's class (because we always teach at the same time) but saw gorgeous yarns come out of there all day...  and in my class we worked on a little cowl that would become a sampler for all the delicious yarns we tried - it was like a wine tasting, only with yarn, and the flight was twelve exquisite specialties. 


Bison, silk, vicuna, guanaco, qivuit - really interesting and delicious stuff - and a lot of fun to talk about.  Most of these fibres are expensive, as they should be for a variety of reasons, so it was really fun to lay them all out.



Tina and I are just us though, and the real story was the cooking class.  For three days, knitters went to cooking classes, visited a working farm/cidery, cooked for each other, served each other and ate with each other, and from peeling the fava beans to searing chicken, they had it going on. 


Each dinners meal was paired with a wine flight, and James, the Wine Steward, walked us through all of them.  It was pretty fantastic for me, and I was working, so I hope it was even better for all the knitters.  We aim to please, and this felt like it really worked.


It's one of my favourite feelings, what happens when a space is occupied only by knitters, and for three days that's just what happened.  Every room in that Inn (plus a couple) had a knitter in it... every activity was knitter friendly,  yarn and needles sprouted on every surface, and the yarn bombing? I can't even talk about how good it was.  It's elevated to art now. That's for sure.

In short, it was perfect, and I'm really, really grateful to the knitters who made it possible.  I'm ever so lucky that you let me do this stuff. 

(PS. Yeah, I know. I'm posting five minutes before midnight.  What can I say. I was determined to post today, and had technical difficulties. Yeah, I'm looking at you laptop.  You know what you did.)

(PPS. Thanks to Tamara. I stole a couple of her great pictures of the cooking class. Regretfully, I was teaching when it went down.)


Posted by Stephanie at June 28, 2012 11:55 PM