Well, I never expected to find myself a knitting group quite so far away but a trip to Minnesota was just where I found them! We fly from New York with the briefest of stops in Chicago in time to grab a sandwich before we were off again (we’re definitely going to stop in Chicago properly next time!) and soon enough we were landing in Minneapolis. It was just as we were landing at Minneapolis airport that I looked at pao and smiled saying hopefully those people I’d been in almost daily touch with wouldn’t turn out to be axe murderers.
It wasn’t hard to spot Eileen because she had the international flag of the knitblogger in her hands – a very beautiful looking sock so that was a good start. Eileen is an incredibly good sport and had volunteered us to our first B&B The Covington Inn.
She is forever a knitting heroine because not long after we’d arrived in St Paul, she pulled up outside Borealis Yarns 🙂 That is pretty good going as we’d been with Eileen about an hour at that point so I was highly up for some immediate corruption. Let me say that I came out of Borealis with a rather large bagful due to pao encouraging the ladies in the store to convince me to choose something else and he kept picking up balls of yarn and kept saying how nice they were. Eileen gave me the most amazing pair of foldupable scissors which are brilliant as they won’t poke a hole in me or my knitting bag. Amazingly, I managed to get these through several sets of airport security without forgetting to pack them in the hold luggage and they are now safely ensconced in my knitting bag! Hooray! Thank you, Eileen!
Finding our boat wasn’t without difficulty because the directions to it were a bit sketchy. We drove around Harriet Island a bit and eventually found someone to ask because my mobile was completely flat by then.
The boat was amazing and I immediately wished that I’d booked all three nights on there rather than just the one. That place is definitely on my must-do list for St Paul!
We had a couple of hours to chill out on the boat before Eileen and Scott came to pick us up for the party at Jeanne’s house. We had a blast – it was great to sit around chatting with everyone in Jeanne’s beautiful garden surrounded by her gorgeous cats.
Doesn’t pao look right at home?
I was chuffed to meet the famous Pirate and his wench 😉
I didn’t take many photos – just these two but pao will have taken loads more which I’m hoping he’ll show you. I was having too much fun knitting and chatting 🙂
Thank you so much to Jeanne and Michael for having us round their beautiful house! Thank you to Scott and Eileen for driving us! Thank you to Chris for the really lovely gift bag (I haven’t taken photos yet but I will) and for organising the blocking wires! We had a brilliant time with all of you 🙂