SOAR 2

So, here I am at Day 3 - which would normally be the last workshop day, but in my case is the last day of a rather splendid mini-vacation.

Each day has taken more or less the same form. Get up insanely early with the DSM, drink a pretty foul cup of tea, go to breakfast, which is probably the best meal of the day, come back to room. Wave bye bye to the DSM, read a bit. Toddle of to pool, where I doggy paddle around for half and hour or so, back to room, make pot of coffee, read, knit spin.

I had intended to walk the grounds, but we have had a lot of rain one day, and extremely high winds every day, so I have marched the endless corridors instead!

Go to meet the DSM for lunch, then afterwards more of the above. Lunch is probably the second best meal of the day, supper generally the least satisfactory. The arrangements for non-meat eaters at this SOAR are strange, and we nearly bust a double gasket on the first evening when there was only meat and vegetables and sald. The salad is good, but identical every day, twice a day. Most strange - the best quality food in ages, but absolutely no notion of how to treat vegetarians. But this is Wisconsin - which means cows......

In all other respects, this location for SOAR is brilliant. All under one roof, comfortable rooms, lots of nooks and crannies with comfy chairs for gathering. It would be nice to think that we might be returning in future years, but for one thing, the resort is in receivership (!!) and lli8kely to close; for another, massive change, SOAR is moving to a chain hotel in a city next year.

For now, I stay silent on the matter.......

Today, though, I varied my routine and went a-visiting some of the workshops with my camera. Not easy to take good photos at SOAR, the classrooms are not usually well-lit. But I got a few, and chatted my way happily around the place.



This is the DSM and the famous (or should that be infoamous??) Denny, both taking the bast fibres class with Stephenie Gaustad. It looks to have been a brilliant class.



This was on the wall of Deb Menz's classroom. Please note the letters in green! Love our little ole fibre world.



Then I visited Sara Lamb's silk ribbons class (hope I've got the title right!) I appear to have given her a halo, but that is probably appropriate!

After that I did have a little wander outside, because the sun was shining. There was intersting tree bark - this is an unfamiliar variety of oak with humungous leaves most of which have now blown away in the gales



And I couldn't resist the red fire hydrant in the flower bed.



Tomorrow, the market opens. Need I say more? The intention this year is to by larger quantities of fewer fibres, to try to avoid the "problem" of having four ounces of something pretty to fit to a project. And there will be spindles........

Friday and Saturday, I am taking classes. More on that after the event.