Tuesday, May 18, 2010

creative weekend

a yearly retreat under the oaks


We spent a weekend together as a family with our friends of Griffin Dyeworks, at their annual Dye & Fiber Retreat, held in beautiful Camp Verdugo Oaks. For the past few years, we have been enjoying the creative energy of some amazing people who are dedicated to sharing their fiber arts and crafts. Jennifer has been teaching Tunisian crochet and other handwork for the retreat. The children have been joining in and participating with the various crafting classes. This year, Ricky created a glass stone bowl soldered with copper and tin. Joey needle-punched a design of her own. We tie-dyed shirts, and hand-dyed many yarns and silks. Ricky and I, on our down time, whittled manzanita branches into knives!

We love the company of our creative friends, and the food was fantastic! What makes the retreat so wonderful for us is that, as a family, we can enjoy our tent pitched under a magnificent oak with birds singing, and the sun would rise warmly over the hills. And together, we can engage our family spirit in creative work that we all love.

the morning view from our tent

preparing yarn for dyeing

dyeing yarn

needle-punching

assembling the glass and copper bowl

impromptu music

our gosh yarn it! store at the retreat

hand-dyed yarns

teaching a tunisian crochet class

tie-dyeing

crafting all weekend

our weekend work

4 comments:

Grandma said...

Your creative weekend is wonderful! I can see why the Tan family enjoys participating each year. It is a perfect weekend full of many interesting activities.

Lacey (schoolhousefarm) said...

what a neat adventure! SO much to learn!

TwigandToadstool said...

What a fantastic resource your blog is! I am a homeschool mom up in Canada...always on the look out for inspiration! I think I'll find alot of it here! Thank you!
Maureen

The Knitty Gritty Homestead said...

Rick,
Just saw your guest post on The Magic Onions, and it was so timely. I'm working to bring more Waldorf education into our home, but find it appeals more naturally to my girls. My son is (naturally)into superheroes, vikings, knights...he's just not into the gnomes, toadstools, and fairies I see on so many sites/blogs! I'm glad I found your blog...I'm sure it will offer lots of help!
Stephanie