This weekend we had a sort of knitter’s retreat in Marblehead at Bonnie’s house. We all descended on the house Friday evening and stayed until late Saturday afternoon. It’s a gorgeous location on the water.

We’ve all be having fun knitting baby items for Bonnie. Carrie made these cute little booties that seemed knit up in a flash, particularly since she’d been making socks for her fiance immediately before. I brought my beading tools and Carrie put together some stitch markers from the beads she bought in Cambridge a few weeks ago.

One of the interesting features of Bonnie’s house is an indoor rock climbing wall. Heather tried it out while the rest of us knit and chatted.  We had a potluck dinner,  conversation and stories late into the night (well, late for me that is but then I’m an obnoxiously early riser).

Really, even when I’m up late the night before, I still can’t sleep past daylight. I’ll catch up this week I’m sure. It was a clear morning and the sunrise was beautiful. I worked on the toe of the pink sock while the sun came up and before long Carrie and Bonnie were awake as well.

Saturday morning Bonnie set up her spinning wheel and many of us tried spinning with it. I tried using some "sticky" wool and found I spin much lumpier with that stuff. Bonnie also had some nice top with a really long staple length that I tried and did a little better with. I got out the drop spindle for just a little while but didn’t do very much with that. After lunch we took a little walk around the neighborhood and down to the water’s edge.

At the end of the day we drove into town to visit the local yarn shop, A Yarn Over Marblehead, which conveniently had a sale. I picked up some dark red superwash for socks, a few balls of naturespun worsted for felting, and some stray balls from the $1 basket.

Even with all that going on, I managed to finish the pink retrorib socks. The toe is slightly wonky due to a few glasses of wine but it doesn’t seem so wonky as to need reknitting so I kept it as is. These were done with Taj Majmahal yarn on size 2 needles following the retrorib sock pattern from Interweave Knits magazine Winter 2004. I cast on for another pair of curvy lace socks but this time in black. I plan to give them to Mom when I’m there week after next.

All the pictures from the weekend can be found here: http://www.prospeednet.net/jsprague/marblehead%20knitting%2005/index.htm