Sisu Designs

Every Fall and Winter, we offer several weekend knitting retreats in northern Minnesota, and every Spring we offer a week-long retreat in northern New Mexico.  Please remember to add our site to your bookmarks or favorites and come back to check for updates.  Better yet, please visit our contact page and join our email group so we can notify you as soon as we have any shop or retreat news to share.

We have been doing knitting retreats (or knitting camps as some people call them) in northern Minnesota since 1979.  We started with one fall retreat each year, then added a second fall retreat and a few times even a third, and then also added a winter retreat as the experience caught on.  Our first week-long knitting retreat at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico happened in February of 2001.  We had such a wonderful time there that we expanded, for a while, to two week-long retreats at Ghost Ranch in March 2002.  Some women have commented that being there was "a life changing experience" for them. After a four-year break necessitated by family care-giving, we have resumed our Ghost Ranch retreats. We are also contemplating possibilities of a Pacific coast retreat. Stay tuned. In February 2009 we also held our first "Stay Inn Ely" knitting retreat, which gave participants a chance to stay right in Ely, close to the shop, and to enjoy various offerings here, including our Ely Winter Festival.

At these retreats, a couple dozen women (men are welcome too!) gather to knit, learn, share, experiment and enjoy one another's company, encouragement and support.  Show and tell and sharing our stories is always part of the experience.  And we always have a massage therapist available for half-hour or full-hour massages! We bring a lot of samples, yarn, needles, buttons, patterns and other items from the shop out to our weekend retreats near Ely, and being at the retreat feels like living in a yarn shop .  We don't haul nearly as much shop stuff to New Mexico, but we do take field trips to nearby Tierra Wools and La Lana Wools, and other yarn shops in the area. Everything we bring to sell is available at a ten percent retreat discount.

Several times we have brought in some well-known teacher to share a special knitting or finishing technique. Sometimes, one or another of our knowlegebale knitter friends has been our retreat teacher. Other times, Susan has been the teacher. We typically have one or several retreat projects, or perhaps some particular theme, to work on and a number of participants will choose to work on these at our retreats. Optionaly, some knitters prefer to bring their own projects to focus on while enjoying working in the company of the other knitters.

Some people have been coming to our retreats for many years. We also keep picking up a few new participants for each retreat. Some participants are highly accomplished knitters while others are just beginning. Everyone is welcome, everyone learns something new, everyone has a good time.

Interested? Remember to visit our contact page to to join email group so we'll be able to let you know as soon as we have new information available about our retreats. Also, there are information sheets, registration forms and maps for our retreats available as PDF files that you can download from our Yahoo group site or from this web sit.

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