Stitching Retreat 2013 – roundup

Through Meetup I’ve found this knitting group. Since this year I’m a member of the Stitch’n’Bitches in Zurich. They’ve welcomed me with open arms. They’re all around my age and that makes it even more fun to attend. We meet us every other sunday at Starbucks in Zurich. In the meantime we’re already more than 100 members. Time for schedule something new, right? I had an idea to organise a knit camp but for camping around september it was already a bit too chilly. So I’ve looked for an alternative which is still affordable.

Here in Switzerland we have youth hostels which can also booked by adults. Very close to Zurich there’s a youth hostel in Fällanden, next to the Greifensee (the pics above are from this website). The house is situated next to the lake, has a large backyard where you can play volleyball, ping-pong or set up a fire. The house is only available for groups. So you have the house for your own. It has space for 48 people.

I thought that might be a good option for those of us who doesn’t like to camp (indeed I like to camp). And we can stay in the warmth, independent of the weather. I’ve booked the house from saturday morning until sunday afternoon and I’ve set up the event on Meetup, hoping that there are enough people who would come (and to cover the costs). By the end we were around 20 people who attended.

As it is a youth hostel and not a hotel it is self-catering. Everybody brought something to eat and I organised the beverages. That worked great: As we’re a mixed group (the ladies come from almost every part of the world) some of them made a traditional food, like spanish omelet. Another baked bread or the other prepared vegan spring rolls. By the end we had so much (and delicious) food, we could survive for another week.

Fortunately by saturday afternoon it stopped raining so we could set up a fire and make garlic bread or grill marshmallows (yes, there were Americans).

We’ve discussed several themes like yarn weight, the importance of swatches, magic loop, two socks/sleeves at once and more. Some of them were taught the 101 of knitting or the 101 of crochet. Everybody worked on her own projects whether it was to knit, crochet, spinning, cross stitching or even tatting.

The retreat was a total success. By the end of the retreat people were so happy with the event that they asked for another one. I’m so happy about that. All the effort was worth it in the end. And of course there’s planned another one in spring time :-)