A final Retreat....

Last Sunday afternoon I returned home from the final Wildflower Fiber Retreat ever, and I am sad.  We all are. But all good things must come to an end, and our fiber retreats were a really, really good thing for those of us in this neck of the woods who are crazy about all things fiber, including fiber animals, spinning, weaving, and knitting, and getting together once a year with like-minded souls to learn and share in an atmosphere of fun and fellowship. For me personally, it was my life-line to communal creativity, and a testament to the fact that there really were others out there who are interested in the same things that I am.  This final get-together was the 20th Anniversary, and I have been blessed to attend 9 out of the last 10 retreats. I have the t-shirts to prove it!

We began arriving at Camp Tyler, on Lake Tyler, around 4:30 pm on Friday, March 7, 2014.  For many of us older ladies, it is VERY important to get there early so we can claim a Bottom Bunk in one of the cabins where we will spend the next two nights. I found out my first year that climbing into the top bunk is easy....getting down from it, not so easy, especially in the middle of the night for a potty call.  

Cabin at Camp Tyler

Most of our time will be spent in and around the Lodge, which quickly turns into a hive of activity as new arrivals are greeted, hugged, and registered for the Event.  There were several new faces among the "regulars", and everyone was excited to be away from their usual environment for a weekend ... ready to see what fun the Wildflower Committee had planned for us.  Ready to play!

The Lodge at Camp Tyler

Soon the main room of the Lodge was packed with spinning wheels, bags and baskets overflowing with equipment, fiber, handspun yarns, completed projects, UFOs (Unfinished Objects), and snacks (mostly of the chocolate kind). The vendors set up their wares in the library while everyone else got settled into the spot they had chosen in the main room of the Lodge.  Pizza and salad were served between 6 and 7, and then the real fun began! New spinners met in the Lodge's smaller room and began the sometimes frustrating but always rewarding journey of learning to spin fibers into yarn.  The "old timers" spent time catching up on each other's lives while we spun on what we had brought, visited the vendor's to see what we couldn't resist adding to our stash, and held impromptu "show and tell" with one another.  

My fiber purchases from some of the vendor's.  From left to right is
silk/merino blend, Shetland/Black Welsh Mt. wool blend batt,
Black Welsh Mt. wool batt,silk/merino blend, & painted wool roving.

Fiber Sisters

Wildflower Fiber Retreat Spinners

While most went to bed around 10 pm each night, some of us continued our tradition and stayed up way past midnight, talking and laughing and sharing, and then walked back to our cabins in the pitch black dark, swinging our flashlights and listening for rustling in the bushes. We crept quickly and quietly into our squeaky bunk beds, and before we knew it some one's alarm was going off and a new day of fun had dawned.  Time to get up, get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair, put on makeup (some of us!), and back to the Lodge for playtime!  But first some coffee or tea, and breakfast of muffins, fresh fruit, and yogurt.

Saturday was centered around learning how to create "art batts" which are quite popular these days.  You can find them for sale on Etsy, Artfire, Ebay, and Amazon.com.  We were going to learn how to make our very own!  What fun!  Linda Masters was to be our main guru with the help of one of the Wildflower ladies, Mitchie Ryan, who had been practicing different techniques of the spinning of art batts so that she could help answer any and all questions that we might have.  An art batt is made up of a multitude of colors and textures, with or without some sparkle or found objects.....truly one-of-a-kind, and creativity is the only rule.

Linda Masters demonstrating how to make an art batt.

Linda shows off the art batt she just made.
She is wearing one of her art batts as a cowl!
How cool is that?!

In the beginning, various colors and types of fiber were spread onto two tables in the Lodge's main room. Three other tables held drum carders....one at each corner of the tables...for a total of 12.  The minute the instruction was over, we scattered like fish in a well-mannered feeding frenzy to the mounds of colored fibers and began grabbing what we wanted to use in our very first experiments with this technique.  There was wool roving and top in a rainbow of colors, dyed mohair locks, natural and dyed uncarded wools and fibers, silk, soy fiber, alpaca, and llama.  And there were the bags of angelina and angelfire: synthetic fibers that glisten and let you add as much "bling" as you want to your carded batt. Some like a lot, some not so much....I am one of the latter.  To me, a little goes a long way!

Angelfire fiber and

Angelina fibers.....lots of glitz for lots of bling!

Then it was a race to the drum carders, although some of us, including me, took a much longer time deciding which colors of which fibers they wanted to use.  Once the carding began, the magic was everywhere! There was much ooohhhhing and ahhhhing as colors were blended, glitz was added, and batts came off the carders with a great deal of admiration by the onlookers who were awaiting their turn at the equipment. Once everyone had made their first batt, we were invited to make as many as we wanted as there was plenty of fiber to share. Some of us immediately made one or two more, while others were anxious to get started on spinning their first art batt creation.  Most of us ended up creating at least 3 batts to spin.

Using the drum carder to blend fibers

Creating magic with colorful fibers!

WOW!!!  My first art batt!  

My first art batt spun up, 2 singles plied together

After supper on Saturday night, it was time for announcing the skein contest winners, show and tell, and door prizes.  There is always a door prize for everyone who attends, which is really fun for me for I never had any luck with winning door prizes, anywhere, at any time.  You know how there are folks who always win something?  That is not me!  

At the conclusion of handing out the door prizes, we got busy again, and when the night owls among us finally turned out all the lights and headed to our cabins, there was fuzz and fiber and bits of glitz all over the floor,  on our clothes, in our hair, and only a tiny fraction of fiber left on the two tables.  It had all been used in the creation of handspun beauty, and creativity had taken its toll!

Another one of my batts

I will ply it with this copper metallic thread!

Another of my batts...

and another!  I made four in all.

When I left my cabin on Sunday morning, it was beginning to mist, and fog was beginning to roll in "on little cat feet" (thank you, Carl Sandburg!).  A line of waterfowl took off from the lake, and the smell of coffee invited me into the Lodge for our last day of the Retreat.  After breakfast, we began winding down toward an after lunch departure.  The morning was spent spinning, visiting the vendors (again!) and visiting with new and old friends. Email addresses, blog sites and other social media info were exchanged.  Most of us began moving some of our "stuff" out to our vehicles before sitting down at our wheels one last time until the call for lunch was made.

Flor shows off the yarn she spun from her first
art batt.... and she is a newbie spinner!!!

During lunch, there were a few announcements made relative to how we might continue to meet at various other venues as a way to keep the friendships, connections, and creativity flowing. We were all sad, but hopeful. Twenty years is a long time, and a lot of hard work for our fiber sisters, the dedicated women of the Wildflower Committee.  We are grateful that they had had the vision to host a Wildflower Retreat all those years ago, and then to continue to do so despite all the major planning that was involved.  We appreciate them all so very much! And it is not really Farewell.....it's Till We Meet Again!

View of Lake Tyler from porch of the Lodge

Around 4:15 pm Sunday, I arrived back home, tired but happy, to HeartSong Farm!