Spinny Tour 2010 Part One: SOAR, The Beginning

Slaughter the fatted calf!  The prodigal blogger has returned.

A month of organizing, packing, travelling, and living in hotel rooms has left me weary but full of tales to tell.  If I tell them all in one post, I will be typing for days, and you will be reading for equally as long, so I'm going to try and break things into smaller bites.  We shall have to wait and see if my attention span in long enough to share the complete meal with you.

Let us begin with the epic journey south and east to Spin-Off's Autumn Retreat, also known as SOAR.

 I woke up bright and eager to hit the road on the morning of October 22, had my coffee and a bath, packed up the car, and headed out.I got as far as the top of the parkade ramp before I realized there was something wrong with my car.  A quick zip into the visitor parking lot for inspection showed me what the problem was...a flat tire.  No problem, think I, I know how to change a tire.  Except that the lugs would. Not. Budge.  No way, no how.  Still no problem, because I belong to the CAA and I can call a tow truck.  A tow truck that took 3 hours to arrive.

Long story short, there was a wee bit of grit in the threads of the valve that had caused a slow leak, and thanks to the very sweet young man at the service station, I was finally on the road 5 hours later.

I could not help but wonder if this was a sign of things to come.

The next day was a flight from Edmonton to Milwaukee, with a lay-over in Minneapolis-St. Paul.  I passed through customs and security without incident, got on the plane, which took off on time.  So far, so good.  We land in MSP and start to taxi, and part-way to the terminal, stop dead in the middle of the runway.  And we sit.

After about 10 minutes, the pilot's voice comes from the speakers to inform us that we are sitting because President Obama is flying out of the airport and all traffic has to stop until after Air Force One takes off, which it did about 5 minutes later.  In the runway right beside us.  I waved.  No one waved back.

I grabbed a bite to eat, then got on my plane to Milwaukee, which is about a 45 minute flight.  Arrived in Milwaukee, encountered a very surly cab driver, checked into my hotel.  The next morning, I was up and pacing, waiting for my ride to the Lake Lawn resort and SOAR.

Lake Lawn Resort is a lovely place...

...right on the edge of Lake Delavan.  The resort is essentially a giant letter C, wrapping around the side of the lake.  I was placed in a lovely room at the very far end of the C, which made for a great deal of walking to get to meals and workshops, but was well worth it when we got to sit on our patio with a glass of wine and stare out at this...

I met my room mate (more about her and our many adventures to come in a future post), went to the welcome and dinner, then tried to sleep.  I was so keyed up, thrilled to be there and looking forward to my workshop, that sleep was hard to find.  Turns out that this would be the pattern for the week.

Monday morning.  Day one of a three-day workshop with Kathryn Alexander in working with energised singles.  The day started out with an exploration of twist in singles, and what happens when you add water.  The concepts of neutralizing twist, resting twist, and activating twist were all poked into.  Then we knitted.  Knitting with S twist and Z twist, knitting with different wrapping techniques, knitting with garter stitch and stockinette.  Simple concepts, really, but looked at from a rather different angle that made them very fresh and exciting for me.

Over the next two days, we spun singles, then knitted them in different ways.  We got all sorts of different cloth.  There were bumps and swirls and peaks and ribs in all sorts of unexpected places...

...and twisty yarns galore...

On Wednesday evening, after the last day of our workshop, we participated in an event called the Workshop Showcase, which is an opportunity for each workshop group to display their work from the previous 3 days.  There were angora bunny samples...

...and suri alpaca...

There were fine lace...

...and funky, chunky art yarns...

There were recycled fibres...

...and alternative materials used in fun ways...

There were blended fibres...

...and bast fibres being twisted into ropes...

There was also a table of naturally dyed fibres, colored with cochineal, chamomile and indigo that I neglected to get a photo of, along with the lovely thick yarns from another workshop. I was clearly distracted by those rowdy rope-makers, of whom I have far too many pictures...

So, with visions of twisty singles and active cloth dancing in my head, I wandered off to bed.  The next half of SOAR was about to begin, and I needed my rest...