SOAR (Spin-Off Autumn Retreat) was held at Shanty Creek Resort in Michigan this year. What a beautiful time to be in Michigan. The trees were just starting to change. Unfortunately, they were renovating the resort, so the spinners were split across two villages. We got the old village.

I took Sara Lamb's Silk Ribbons workshop. It was great fun, and I learned to spin silk much better. It seems I wasn't putting enough twist into it. My poor Ashford Traveler had a very difficult time keeping up with my demands. It felt like I was running a marathon with the poor thing. This was the inspiration for my buying the Lendrum. It has much better ratios for spinning silk.

We were instructed in three different pick-up techniques on the inkle loom over the three day period when we weren't spinning. What I learned the most from the workshop is that I never want to do pickup again. I'll stick to my cards. Just too tedious and time consuming. Those who know me don't understand this. It seems I do other things with joy that they see as tedious (like turning cards!).

Every night Amy (roommate extraordinaire) and I spent the evening in the lobby with "the gang" spinning, knitting, weaving, whatever. Plenty of very cheap wine was supplied by my new friends Dan and Phreadde. It was affectionately called Swill throughout the retreat, and left some of us with horrible headaches in the morning.

I went with...

• Combing wool with Robin Russo
• Needle Felting with Sharon Costello
• Entrelac knitting with Kathryn Alexander
• and Kitchen sink yarn with Janel Laidman

All of the instructors were incredible! My favorite was probably the Entrelac knitting. That was wicked crazy with knitting on the purl side and purling on the knit side and making squares and triangles and peaks and valleys, and on and on...