Friday, June 10, 2011

Squam Art Workshops


    I spent June 2 through 6 at Squam Art Workshops at Rockywold/Deep Haven Camps in Holderness, New Hampshire.  What an amazing few days!  Between the splendid natural beauty, the creative and stimulating people, the great classes, three meals a day served in a dining hall and free beer each evening it was just an outstanding experience.
   SAW happens twice a year, Spring and Fall, and the Spring workshops are mostly fiber related.  Along with the full gamut of knitting classes there was printmaking, embroidery, pattern-making, sewing, a bit of carpentry, Yoga , spinning and crochet.  The teachers were all rockstars in their fields and everyone I spoke with thoroughly enjoyed the classes.  I loved mine!  I took two days of Printmaking classes, a day of linoleum printing with Lizzie House and a day of botanical prints using freezer paper stencils with Maya Donenfeld.  The third day was an all day class with Ysolda Teague on The Perfect Sweater.  It was a class about fitting and adapting sweater patterns so that they will both fit and flatter.  It was a long and uncomfortably cold class, much of it spent huddled around the fireplace in the Playhouse, but it was totally awe inspiring.{Interestingly, my class the following day was in the same building, and we discovered there is a HUGE electric space heater there, and we were toasty warm!}  I was able to purchase Ysolda's  brand new book Little Red in the City, which we used as a text for our future sweater endeavors.
My porch
Greenwood Lodge

My room, very monastic, but cozy
Greenwood living room

Happy Hour and Knitting do mix!
   My cabin was called Greenwood.  I was there because I requested a single room, and what a room it was; a room with a balcony overlooking Squam Lake.  The cabin slept 20 people and we had an amazingly diverse group, first timers, mothers and daughters, friend, total strangers.  We also had two people staying off campus, Judy and Gretchen, who adopted our cabin as a place to hang out.  Most everyone knit and our cabin was used for classes by Gudrun Johnston during the day, and also one afternoon for a discussion of writing and knitting by Barbara Delinsky, who was a Squam attendee