A blog about my life, knitting, and other stuff.

July 12, 2004

Knitting Camp Recap

To give you a sense of just how exhausted I was last night (2 AM) when I wrote my post, I found this morning that I had never published it.

There is so much to tell about camp. I don't know where to start. I guess I'll begin with an outline of camp.

I left home at 5 am on Wednesday. I flew to Chicago and then got a connecting flight to the Central Wisconsin Airport. As I got to my seat, on the plane in Chicago, the woman in the seat next to me looked at my felted tote and asked, "Are you going to knitting camp?" My first real-life co-camper! We talked the whole way to Wisconsin comparing notes on classes. Karen, my companion, is also a felted bag fanatic so we had lots to discuss. We had arranged to get a limo to take us to camp. When I say "limo" I do not mean a car service. Apparently in Marshfield, WI there is no car service. So Karen and I, along with five other campers, rode in a white stretch limo to camp. We arrived at the Marshfield Best Western at 5:30. There was just enough time to check in, meet my roommate, take a quick shower and get down to dinner at 6.

At dinner we met Christie, the camp administrator, Amy Detjen and Joyce Williams (the camp assistants)and one another. It's a little overwhelming at first with 55 campers. I forgot to make a nametag. After dinner we got to see the "class room." In the hotel conference room tables were set up and a store.







The store was set up for the entire camp. Any time we felt like it we could look at yarn, needles, notions and books. We could take anything we needed and log it on a "brown book" sheet. For some items we had to request it on our sheet and Eleanor would bring in the order the next day.

So the first night we socialized, knit and turned in early. Thursday morning we had breakfast in big groups at the hotel and at 9 we had our first class with Meg.


Here is the only thing that would entice me to central Wisconsin in July.


The first day we covered EPS (Elizabeth's Percentage System) and talked about the construction of Norwegian and yoke-style sweaters. We also went over myriad increases and decreases. We had a little snack break at 10:30 and a lunch break at 12:30. After lunch is Show and Tell. Most campers (me) seemed a little unclear about what this involved. I was kicking myself for not bringing my scrap sweater. I thought it was too lowly and that every camper would be whipping out a self-designed fair isle like in Sweaters from Camp. That was not the case. Mostly people brought their most recent projects, the ones they were the most proud of or projects that were giving them fits. Amy runs the Show and Tell. Amy is a hoot. She's a very tall woman with an enormous voice and personality. She is screamingly funny and irreverent and no one gets by without Amy poking a little fun at them.



(More on Amy and Joyce later.)

After Show and Tell, Meg resumed class which wrapped up at 3:30 or 4. Most campers stayed and knit in the classroom until dinner plans started getting formulated. I went with about 8 other women to a Chinese restaurant called China Chef which was really not half bad. And cheap! We ordered a lot of food--more than we could eat-- and the total was $10 a person including tax and tip. (This was the most expensive meal I had in Wisconsin.)

After dinner it was back to the classroom for more knitting until I couldn't see straight and went to bed.

I'm out of time right now. I'll tell you about the rest of camp later.