Last weekend, fifteen of us gathered at the Cliftonville Hotel in Cromer for the purpose of knitting, chatting, eating, drinking and relaxing, all the elements of a perfect retreat. I had to run away and mind the shop all day on Saturday so I missed most of the fun, but I gather that everyone had a lovely time being shown how to design shawls at a workshop given by Jem from Under the Olive Tree who also brought along a pop up shop. I’m really sorry to have missed that workshop – I’m interested to expand my skills into designing and it would have been good to have had a jumping off point.
As at our previous Retreat , I was really struck by how relaxing it was to just sit and knit without worrying about anything else. I don’t get to do that very often as it happens. I get to snatch a few precious hours in the evenings when I can but otherwise I’m usually running around doing housework and feeding people. The joy of being on a retreat, of course, is that someone else is running around doing housework and feeding you. We were all very impressed by the staff at the hotel, they were extremely attentive without being obtrusive. and the food, I thought, was very good. I also love just chatting with people who are as obsessed with knitting as I am.
I even managed to take time out on Sunday morning to walk along the seafront after breakfast and breathe the sea air. I really like Cromer, but that might be because when we first came to the UK, we moved into a house in Brighton and I’ve always had a fondness for seaside towns. Some of our guests spent some time in the town as well – a couple told me that the Red Lion pub was very good!
As always, Mandy was an absolute star, making sure that everything run smoothly, helping people with knitting problems, chatting and generally being the hostess with the mostest (as my Mum used to say). I’m extremely grateful to her for enabling us to run the retreat and keep the shop open at the same time.
So that’s it for another year! We are planning to do it again same time next year – I just have to finalise the dates with the hotel, decide what we’re going to do workshop wise and then I’ll let you know. That’s not going to happen for another week, however, because on Saturday I’m off on the next leg of my apparently endless summer holidays – escorting my daughter to the International Animation Fair at Annecy in France. Apart from the fact that it’s going to be horribly hot there, I’m looking forward to it. We are going by train which will be an adventure in itself and another opportunity to spend a time knitting. I have put a bid to visit Lyons which is the centre of the textile industry in France, but it’s possible that the hot weather might get in the way of my plans. My husband is making noises about sailing on the lake, but I think I might have had enough sailing for the time being. We are only away for a week, but it means that there will be no blog next week.