Knitting Retreat

Last weekend I spent two days on Chincoteague Island at what was a knit lite retreat. Not the three or four day marathon of knitting two or three big projects, numerous small workshops of an hour or two and falling into bed at night exhausted with little time to sit and knit and enjoy a glass of wine with new friends. Which isn't to say that it can't be done, but I'm too old to get up and be at yoga at 7 the clean up, have breakfast and start my first class at 9, break for lunch, classes all afternoon, then dinner at 6 or 7, and some event until 9 or so. I applaud the women who then enjoy each others company for another few hours. Nope. I have no problem with the getting up at 5 a.m., it is the not getting to bed until well after 9 p.m. that does me in. That is my life.

We hit the road about 11:00 a.m., it is a three and a half hour drive, and we planned to stop for lunch, cruise on down the coast and knew we didn't have anything on the schedule until 6:00. We stopped in Annapolis for lunch, went into the town proper to find a real restaurant as opposed to the fast food we could have grabbed to eat while driving. Parked by a dock, and waundered around town for a few minutes helping the economy before finding a nice pub for a bite.

On our way again, across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which is huge, and they had traffic on one bridge split, so you had to stay in your lane with the green arrow. That meant that while the other bridge was all going the same direction, the bidge I was on (of course) was two lanes coming off the shore, and my lane, going toward the shore. A little creepy and I don't mind driving the bridge, but I was glad to get off of it.

We had enough time once we arrived to find the hotel, then drive around town, well main street, and then go check in. Sit on the balcony and enjoy a glass of wine before our next phase. And we agreed that we weren't hungry yet so of course, no early dinner for us!

A lot of places were still closed for the season, and our inquiry about where to have dinner later was met with, most places close at 9. I didn't even think about McDonalds so we decided to figure out dinner later.

The view from our balcony, where we sat, enjoyed a slight breeze and a large glass of wine.

Our meet and greet went well. We had a this is who I am and here's a project I've done/am working on. There only seemed to be about 10 people or so, and I though that was a great number. Then come to find out 25 people had registered for this weekend. Huh. So maybe they just couldn't get off work in time. That's actually okay, I do better in smaller groups.

We broke up about 8, said we'd see each other at 9 the next morning then everyone went off for food. We found the ice cream shop and decided nothing would be better than ice cream for dinner. It's a vacation, right? And it was crowded. A good choice if I do say so myself.

So my first thought was 6 probably isn't a good time to start if there isn't food involved. I know we didn't pay much for the retreat registration because food and hotel was on us, but I think I would have been glad to pay a little more and had maybe a sandwich and salad provided at the first meeting, it would have been easy, we can all clean up after ourselves, and then we could have hung out a little more and knitted/talked/whatever. But there you go. Usually this yarn shop does a full weekend retreat and the "lite" version was a first try at something new. And I'll do it again, without hesitation.