Knitting workshop in France 2010

At last! Have got some dates and tutors.

24th - 30th May 2010 at the chateau again. Tutors Anne Makepeace and Heike Gittins, just waiting for the draft programme and full details will be in the next newsletter and on our website. St Julien here we come.......

Knitting workshop in France............

....I'm still working on the dates and tutors, trying to co-ordinate everyone is not proving easy. At the moment we are looking at the possibility of two workshops, one in May at the chateau with two tutors and one in October at a smaller venue with just one tutor. Will post full details as soon as the dates are confirmed.

Saturday at the Chateau

We have an outing to Chauvigny for the market today. The first car load sets off at 8 am on the dot, I go on the last trip to get some shopping in the market. Chauvigny is a mediaeval town in two parts, the market is in the newer bit which is built on the river, to visit the old part of the town you can climb up the winding steps to the top of the hill and can visit the beautiful church which has painted friezes that are just perfect for fairisle and intarsia projects. Culli and I wander around the market, one of the first stalls we come to is the haberdashery one and guess who we find - the whole group rummaging through the button box. I love this stall, some of the buttons are just fantastic - you could spend a fortune and some of us did! The market is great with lots of colourful stalls selling everything you could possible want. I Bought some mussels and prawns for tonight's paella and some yummy looking strawberries and raspberries for pavlova (and of course some buttons...). Back to base for lunch followed by the final workshop, which was how to finish off the projects and an introduction to mattress stitch for those that didn't know. At last - show and tell, everyone lays out their projects, a few finished and some not quite. But a fantastic effort from all and apologies to any that I haven't included in the photos, I know I didn't manage to get them all. When asked to sum up the week these were some of the comments - 'Naught Mallory Towers girls go mad knitting in France: yarn, sun, buttons, wine and patisserie' by Yolie, 'this week has been truly inspirational, dedicated, good humoured and generous tutors, first class hospitality and delightful company' Suzanne (see Suzanne and Yolie's blog glittyknittykitty), 'delightful and brilliant' Gloria (Gloria is Connie's mum and comes from Texas and brilliant is her new word for the week), 'Thank you for a glimpse of what heaven might be' Mary Leeson, 'Fantastic in all aspects, when's the next one?' Chris, 'what a wonderful week of knitting, what wonderful women and wonderful creations, the best holiday I have ever had' Natalie. Back to the terrace and more Kir, we have a little prize-giving ceremony. Instead of choosing the four best projects of the week we ask the guests to vote for the person they think most deserves to win a prize and put the names in the hat. Felicity, Toril, Natalie and Chris were the four names drawn. Sarah, Emma and I all received some beautiful gifts and a bottle of whisky and bubbly for Culli - thank you everyone for your generosity and for being such good guests! For the first time in the week I actually managed to sit down and eat with everyone, was a total slut and left most of the clearing up in the kitchen for the next day and carried on chatting until the early hours of the morning sitting outside in candlelight and smothered with Toril's mosquito cream. It was a great week all round, just need to get that date booked for next year! Culli arrived back from the gig at 2.45, I knew that neither of us would feel like doing the clearing up in the morning.

Exploring colour workshop at Chateau St Julien l'Ars

Culli and I arrived at the Chateau on Saturday evening, it is looking as beautiful as ever. We sat on the terrace with a bottle of wine and a bowl of moules and I carried on writing some never-ending lists for the week. This beautiful Chateau can be rented by anyone on a self-catering basis and will sleep up to 45 in 15 bedrooms, for further details click here.
Sunday morning was bright and sunny, we have a total of 17 guests arriving and the two tutors Emma King and Sarah Hazell. Culli went off to the airport and station to pick up the first three arrivals, Pippa, Caroline and Mary and I made many trips up the three flights of stairs to check all the bedrooms and work out who was going where. It was good to see Caroline and Mary again, both were on our second French workshop two years ago. After lunch Culli headed off to pick up the next batch from the station, all the pick ups went to plan, with no delays (apart from Natalie who we thought was lost in France, but it was just a little mistake on the arrival time), so Chris who had arrived by car leapt to the rescue and went and picked up a car load and by 7 pm everyone was sitting on the terrace with their knitting and apero in hand. We have four more returns from last June, Mary, Felicity, Karen and Sarah. By the time everyone sat down to Mustard Pork casserole and Tuscan bean stew, everyone was getting along fine. Emma and Sarah stayed up until nearly midnight getting the workshop ready for Sunday, and it looked amazing. I crawled off to bed feeling shattered.

Shades of Autumn workshop at Chateau de St Julien L'Ars

14th - 21st October 2008. This was our fourth residential workshop run jointly with Rowan, the course was design based with tutors Debbie Abrahams and Jane Crowfoot. I arrived at St Julien on the night before the workshop straight from the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally so was not feeling that lively to say the least. However we had an early arrival, Christine had come all the way from Australia (via New York) to take part in the workshop so we launched straight into entertaining mode with a lovely meal cooked by Di and enough wine to sort out Christine's jet lag for days!

The remaining 17 guests and Jane and Debbie arrived on Tuesday, after all my panic about delays from the Channel tunnel, Denise was the only late arrival. The workshops were on a similar theme to the week in June, however we had decided to introduce felting this time which was a great success. The thought of actually producing a finished project by the end of the week gave all the guests further incentive. The weather was kind to us with lovely sunny days, warm enough to sit outside for much of the time, but cold enough at night to have a roaring fire in the small dining room downstairs and some roasted chestnuts. The outing to Poitiers on the second day was a great success, with possibly more shopping than inspiration occurring, but on the second workshop everyone settled down to achieve their targets for the week.

The workshops consisted of two full days on basic knitwear design, how to change a pattern and yarn and how to plot charts and graphs, these were followed by half day workshops on intarsia, fairisle, beading and hand felting, with evening workshops on crochet and finishing techniques. Knitting needles were constantly clicking, some even at the dinner table every evening.

We had a second outing to the picturesque town of Chauvigny on the Saturday morning to visit the bustling open air market and to climb up the steep steps to the beautiful old church.

The final review of the week produced some fantastic projects, with certificates and prize-giving in the evening followed by a lively meal and some of us chatting away into the small hours, seemed like a good idea at the time until I had to get up four hours later to get the breakfast ready! Another wonderful week with a lovely bunch of guests, looking forward to June 2009 already.