My First Knitting Retreat

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The retreat was hosted by Andrea and Madeleine of the Fruity Knitting podcast. Watch, subscribe, and support them on Patreon https://www.youtube.com/@FruityKnitting

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, everyone. This is Kim Beigler, owner of Youthful Fiber Farm and Mill, and I am sitting here fresh back from Costa Rica at home in Harrisburg, Oregon, and I'm going to talk Today about my first knitting retreat. This was my very first knitting retreat to Costa Rica. So I wanted to share with you what it was like for those of you who have never been on one, who have thought of going on one, or maybe some of you have gone on one share my experience. And that's what we're here to do today. I am going to do tomorrow on Wednesday, which will be February 12th, 2025. There will be a YouTube episode. That's what I'm trying to say. And I'll have some of the videos I shared and some of the stuff that we worked on and it, but this one, this episode, I was going to just kind of share some of my thoughts so that I didn't have to share so much of that. in the vlog. I'm a little bit rusty so bear with me because it's been two weeks since I have recorded or done anything like this so hopefully my notes will carry me through. And I just wanted to remind anybody who is local that this Saturday I think it's the 15th of February, is Mill Day. 11 a. m to 3 p. m. Unless I sometimes, for some reason, come down with something from our travels. I'm planning to be there. So I hope to see you there and I'll bring some of the stuff along for everyone to look at. I also have Patreon. You can support me there. There's more fun things going on, meetups, tutorials, and just behind the scenes stuff of the mill. And of course you can find me on YouTube. And I just wanted to remind you that I am not on the socials anymore. As far as Instagram and Facebook, I've pretty much pulled myself off. So be sure if you're not on my newsletter list and you're not finding the other places to find me there youthfulfiberpharm. com. Okay. So. First retreat, Costa Rica. So why, I thought I'd start with the like, who, what, why, right? Why did we decide to go on this? And most of you know by now that we are farmers, Mitch is a commercial farmer, I have a flock of many, many animals, and we also have a wool mill. So getting away for us is, It's a big deal and we don't do it a lot and we certainly don't leave the country very often. So it was a big deal. So why this retreat? I've been watching Fruity Knitting for years and if you have not watched the Fruity Knitting podcast, I will put a link to them in the show notes or in the yeah, the show notes. If you haven't watched them and you are a knitter or actually you like any textile type of knitting. discussions, I strongly suggest you go find them because it's a mother and daughter team. They are phenomenal. This is how they make their living. Their living is made by everybody supporting them on Patreon because they love what they do so much. And this is where they put all of their energy. They work tirelessly to say the least. And they produce one of the most beautiful vlogs on YouTube, I think. Just incredibly mindful. So that's why I, when they first announced it on their podcast, and we're Patreon subscribers to them, and so Patreon subscribers got first dibs at getting in, and my first thought was, yeah. Like if I'm going to do a knitting podcast, how mindful they are about their vlog. I imagine all of that energy times 10 will go into creating a retreat that is phenomenal. And it was their first time doing a retreat. So I knew they were going to go the extra, extra, extra mile and Costa Rica. I mean like kind of close, right? Tropical, we haven't been there before. Beautiful, gets us outside. So, that was kind of why we decided to go. And I was going to go alone until we looked at the resort they had picked out and then it was like, well, there's no way I can go to this absolutely stunning, beautiful place without Mitch. So, he looked at the pictures and jumped on board as my non knitting partner. So that's kind of why we decided to go. It was just a chance, and I turn 50 here in another month and a half, and it was like all these things. We work way too much. It's 50. I've worked way too much for the past 25 years time to do something big and sort of do a heart reset. So that's why we did it. I was nervous and I'll talk about that in a minute, but so here's what we kind of expected going into it. There was all these things to prepare swatches to knit all the stuff we knew. I knew Mitch was not obviously doing the retreats or the workshops, but I knew what I was going into and it was heavy on embellishment. More than actual knitting, which I thought, okay, this like gets me outside of something I normally do. Will I do these things again? I don't know, but let's give it a go. A beautiful country, right? I have yet to meet, and we talked to so many people as we were getting ready to go that have gone to Costa Rica. I've yet to hear somebody say they didn't absolutely fall in love with it. So, you know, it seemed like a win place to go. The workshops were going to be great. Claudia Quintanilla did did quite a few of the embroidery workshops and what am I trying to say? A mosaic knitting workshop. She is living in Canada and owns a yarn shop up there. The workshops looked great. I figured it was a chance to meet new Ninners. I mean, I think you all know if you're in my community, whether it's online or in person, that I love community. I love, love, love it. I didn't know I would love it so much when I started in this world, but it is so great. It's really important and this trip only reiterated that. So I knew I'd be in good company, I'd get to meet Andrea and Madeline, I mean come on, and then also that there would be lots of rest for us and that's something we don't do at home because we always have animals, farms, all these things to do. So that's kind of what we expected to go into it like, oh, we're going to a beautiful place, I'm going to be in some workshops, Mitch will lay by the pool or do whatever he wants to do while I'm in workshops and then we'll explore a little bit. So, and I thought, oh my gosh, the amount of knitting, just the travel knitting alone, right? It took us about 15 hours of travel time to, between flying and driving and all of those things each way. So there was a lot of knitting time. Did I have anxiety? I mentioned this a minute ago, and I did. I had a lot of anxiety because we were leaving. And home is home is home. This is like, the home I have We've just built a home here. This is our comfort zone. This is where we come back every night. It feels warm every night when we do come home. It's like that sigh of relief. Home. So, leaving that was hard. And leaving the comforts of that, as far as just being in my zone. Having my animals. Our dogs are older, so I was worried about them. We have a lot of farm animals. I had a lot of anxiety. And not just about leaving home, but about meeting new people. You wouldn't know it for sure. from meeting me, but back in the day, I was a very, very shy person up until I started businesses about 25 years ago. And then you kind of have to come out of your shy comfort zone as a business owner to succeed. And now, but I still get weird, like in a new situation or where I don't know, know people, I still, I have to put everything into getting out there. Sorry, my phone is blowing up behind me, so I'm going to try to silence it. I had to put a lot into. Getting myself out there. That's just where I've come from. So I had anxiety going into it and There was no need for it. There was no need for it The first travel part was a little anxious just because you're trying to figure out how you're getting to where you want it to go Smoothly now you're in another country. You're trying to cast the shuttle bus those things but Worth it. Let me tell you worth it Okay so if you are like me just to say and you have some anxiety about going All of those things or whatever, wherever your anxiety lies, I get it. And I still think it's worth it to do these trips to get us out. Okay. So, oops, my notes got a little mixed up. So how it went, right? It was amazing. It literally was amazing. Mitch and I could not stop talking about as we were traveling home, even over the last couple of days, it's like, how did not go as we expected. Okay. So all those things, I mean, some of it did, but we just didn't think we would have. Such an amazing time as we did. So first off the location, Costa Rica, I mean, there's a reason people love it. There's a reason it's absolutely gorgeous. The animals. I mean, if you enjoy seeing just all these animals, sloths, monkeys, iguanas, everywhere, just birds, like the most amazing birds flying around. If you enjoy all that raccoons, there were some raccoons, which basically are like cats. They told us in the hotel, because I'm not a big fan of raccoons, but they were. They at night they were wandering around the hotel. So Costa Rica, amazing. Our host Amazing, obviously. Andrea and Madeline put together an amazing trip. They picked the resort we stayed at the Parador resort, which is on the west coast of Costa Rica. The resort was phenomenal. It did take about three hours to get there. Take the shuttle to the hotel you can also take a little jumper flight out of the airport the main International airport down there and people said that was great too. So beautiful the beaches It's stunning. The water, you just walked right in. And when it was really warm, that's all you wanted to do was walk right into some form of water. We were in Manuel Antonio. There is a beautiful Manuel Antonio Park there. It's a you pay as, I can't remember how much it was to get in. I think it was the equivalent of like 20, 25 US dollars. We had a, anyway, it was amazing. There was a tour set up by Andrea and Madeline that we all went on as groups. Walked us through with guides, we got to see some more amazing animals we never would have seen. Location? Phenomenal. And, here's the craziest part that we didn't expect. There were no mosquitos. We were expecting mass amounts. Now, this is not going to be always. But the time of year, all the things, and where we are, where we were on the coast, not as bad. So, still bring all the stuff and make sure you check your vaccines and all that stuff before you go. But, I think I got one mosquito bite, and y'all, I am a mosquito magnet. So, that's pretty amazing. So this is kind of how I thought I'd just walk through how the retreat went. So we showed up a day early to the resort, which was really nice. It just gave us time. We like stayed one night in Portland and we traveled and we stayed a night at the airport and then we got the shuttle and we arrived at the resort a day before the retreat started. So we just got to settle in. Acclimate a little bit. Holy cow. We had come from cold and it was hot and just have like drinks, dinner, all that stuff. The workshop started the next night and that night we got to meet everybody else in that they had, you know, cocktails set up and we got Different gifts and stuff. I'm not going to say just in case anybody's still going on the retreat. Cause there's a couple more weeks left, but it was just really lovely. You got to meet the knitters for the first time. So this is like the high anxiety night, I think, because it's like, Oh my gosh, we're here. We've been planning this for seven, eight months. There's all these people I don't know. And everybody's a little bit tired and hot and disoriented, but it was a wonderful night. We did a little, you know, hello. And then everybody went in and had dinner together. And it was just really fun. It was a chance to, you know, every time we had a meal, we were generally together for the meal and everybody was really good about switching up tables. Even in the workshops, everybody, you know, we all wanted to meet each other and get a chance to hear other people's stories, where they're from and all of that. So it was really, really nice. And I think most people were, had that level of like, and let's face it, it's kind of a weird time in the United States. As far as politics in that. So it's always a little like going outside the country and then talking to people you don't know and you don't know where they stand and all that. So it was, but everybody was so respectful and wonderful and nice that there was no issues there. It was an amazing group. Every person was great. Every person was great. You know, I'm going to say sometimes you take a class or you teach a class and there's a student or two that take up a lot of attention or don't know when to stop talking or things like that. Not a single person like that in this group. And I do think part of that is Andrea's personality on the podcast. She comes across as very, and she is exactly how she comes across, very authentic, very mindful, very open minded and I think that draws a certain people to her, right? And those All were the people that were at the retreat. I mean, there was just no, it was, it was a really amazing group. We were really lucky. So anyway, we had a bingo night one night. We had salsa classes on the very last night, which was so much fun. Mitch and I haven't danced in a while. together in a very, very long time and certainly not to that extent. So we had a blast. There was the jungle tour, like I mentioned, where we had a guided tour. We spent meals together. Everybody kind of mingled really well. We got to talk with Andrea and Madeline and it was just a phenomenal time. They did so much wonderful things to organize it and make it fun. And then the workshops, the workshops were for three days. There was a two hour workshop in the morning and one in the evening. Afternoon. So you had time that we all would have lunch together. There was plenty of time to have breakfast, lunch. Afternoon workshop, and then there was time to hit the pool before it got dark and before dinner So it was really it was busy. It was busy But the first you know the first couple evenings Mitch and I would just we would do all these things He would you know, it was great. He did laundry one day He would go exercise he'd go to the pool and then we'd meet up for lunch and stuff in between Well by I don't know the second or third night. We had made some friends. So then we'd all stay up after the dinner and have cocktails and that just kind of carried through to the evening. So here's one of the things that I didn't expect. I think neither of us expected. And I think the other people that we really became good friends with didn't expect was the amount of fun we had meeting other people and it's community. Right. It all comes back to community for this. As I loved every single thing about this trip. But the thing that probably stands out most is the people that we got to meet and the stories we got to hear. And it was like this most amazing reminder that there's a world outside this 30 miles that we farm. And it's so easy to forget, right? Whether you live in the city or whether you live in the country, wherever you live, we all get so entrenched in our day to day that it's so easy to forget. All the other beautiful places in the world there are to see and all the other beautiful people in the world there are to meet. We laughed so much. We had so much joy. And I'm going to share a couple, I'll share some videos and pictures. But that was by far and away my favorite part. Not something I expected. Here's something else weird, right? I did. Very little knitting. And that may panic some people that are heavy knitters, but I did very little knitting and I had a couple of projects with me. I even brought a spindle and some fiber and I even pared it down the night before we were leaving. And I knitted a lot on the plane on the way out. I knitted a bit in the evening, like when we'd get back to our room, but otherwise we were just talking and all of us knitters always had our knitting on us, but it was kind of a consensus that nobody really knit that like this was the least amount that I had knit. In this time period, so, and everybody was kind of on the same page, so it was funny that there was so little knitting, because we were busy, or we were by the pool, or we were at the beach, or we were touring, or we were just sitting and laughing and talking, and usually I would be knitting through that, most of us would be, right, but for some reason we were just so engaged, and so relaxed, and so just in the zone, that knitting, now I will tell you, on the ride home, sorry you all, my dogs are outside, Okay, I think we're back. I think Elsie's done barking at whatever needed to be barked at. Anyway, we had a fabulous time. Like I said, the community was absolutely amazing. So, our last days, we stayed a couple days after, which was fantastic after the retreat was done. So, we actually hung out with some of our new friends, Hans and Dolores. They were there longer and we had such a good time with them. Oh, these silly dogs. Okay. I think we're done. Anyway, we ended up spending the last couple of nights hanging out with them, going to the beach with them, having dinners, very little knitting. Dolores and I got a little more knitting done after the retreat, even sitting on the beach. We both did a little bit of knitting one day, but it was just phenomenal. So here's what My takeaways are my true takeaways after kind of talking through the trip. Travel is important. Man oh man, it's been a long time. We, we don't, I mean we go to different states occasionally. A lot of times we just take breaks close by. We go to the beach, we go to the mountains, we do things like that. But getting out of the city. Your little comfort zone so important whatever that may be like we were lucky enough that we had saved and we could do this trip That's not everybody right? Maybe it's just going to a new city. That's by you or a new community of knitters That's why it just is so important to get ourselves outside our comfort zone because the people you meet You don't know until you meet them how amazing that can be community I'll always go back to community because it's been the biggest joy of what I do at the mill and it's so important. But now our community is even bigger, right? We have all of these people that we met from all over the US, from Holland, from just everywhere. And now, and people, some friends we made that are hoping to retire in Costa Rica. So It just makes your community world bigger. And now we have more people to share with and get to hear about what those people are making and how they make in their everyday lives. It was so fun. Okay, you may not get a lot of knitting done on a knitting retreat. Now this depends, right? Every retreat is going to be different. And like I said, the workshops for this retreat were heavier focused on Embellishments and things you can do with your knitting, like after, after knitting smocking. But the inspiration that came from it just because I wasn't knitting there doesn't mean I wasn't completely inspired. The amount that I knit on the way home, unreal. The amount that I've been knitting at home, unreal. I've just been in it now because I got so inspired by the surroundings, the people, the energy. So while you may or may not get a lot of knitting done on the knitting retreat you get to go on, what you learn and the people you meet will inspire you so much once you get home. And here's the final one. This is going to be controversial. This is going to be controversial because I hear this a lot when people want to learn to hand spin that they're worried that they won't have enough time for it'll take time away from their knitting or their crochet or whatever it is the other thing that they do mainly and last night I was sitting down I wrote notes I was up in my craft room I was writing notes for this episode and after I finished I did a couple rounds and then I thought oh hey you know what I could pick up that embroidery that I was working on that we worked on in the class. And so I did. I sat there and I worked on the embroidery for learning. This was embroidering onto your knitting. So I'm doing it on a swatch. I also, we also learned sashiko knitting, er, sashiko embroidering. And I've been obsessed with that. Not Not knitting, but I'm just like running through these things. I have a place and time in the day where I'm like, let me do a little Sushi Shiko embroidery. Let me do this embroidery. Let me do that. And it is taking time away from my knitting and spinning. But you know what? Who cares really? If you love it, and you're enjoying doing it, it's okay to be away from that other craft, right? If you don't love it, then that's different, right? If you're just like forcing yourself through a craft just for the sake of trying to do it. But, if you love it, learn it, and then see how it goes, right? Spinning, I realize, takes a little bit more of a learning curve and a little bit more time, but still. So, once you know it, it's just another thing and let's, you know, all these repetitive motions and all the things that we do in some of these crafts, it's not a bad idea to branch out and to have more skills and to have more crafting options to give other muscles in our body a rest. So, learning new crafts is okay. That was my point there. So anyway, I hope that this was enjoyable for you to listen to. I hope you Got some of the excitement that I got out of that trip. Like I said, I will be posting on YouTube tomorrow with a few of the videos from there and showing some of the finished knitted things that I worked on and also what I'm working on now currently with knitting and show off some of the embroidery and stuff that we learned in that trip. while we were there in Costa Rica. So anyway, thank you so much for listening. I hope this was enjoyable for you. I hope maybe it sparked a little interest in maybe finding a new knitting community to venture out to occasionally or maybe taking a knitting retreat. It was worth it. Everything it was worth everything to us. Absolutely priceless. So thank you so much. Everybody take care until I see or talk for you to you again. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you get this downloaded to your podcast place and everybody take care. I will talk to you soon.