Letters
An MDK Knitting Getaway for All—Plus a Giveaway!
Dear Kay,
This morning we await the arrival of 100 knitters who are game for a long weekend of doing, frankly, not all that much.
We’re in bucolic Sewanee, Tennessee, at the very first MDK Knitting Getaway at Shakerag Workshops. We don’t really know what to expect, given that this is the first time we have hosted any sort of retreat. But it’s safe to say that we are going to do our level best to be sure that everybody has enough time and space to enrich their knitting skills, dye some wool, embrace the splendor of nature and also an alpaca, stretch their legs in yoga, on a bike, or in the woods. Or none of the above. We’ve been looking forward to this for about fifteen years, so anticipation and readiness are at DEFCON 1 .
We wish everybody could attend this getaway. In the interest of spreading the getaway fun all over the internet, we hereby announce a Virtual MDK Knitting Getaway Shop right here. Delicious yarn specials, just like we’re offering at the Knitting Getaway this weekend. Here’s what’s up for grabs, all at special prices:
Ninepatch Blanket Kit, featuring 15 smooshy skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca: 20% off.
Station Wagon Blanket Kit, featuring Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted: $99.
Hadley Pullover Kit, featuring Brooklyn Tweed Shelter: 10% off.
Milo by Manos del Uruguay: 25% off.
Haymarket by Lorna’s Laces, in six MDK-exclusive shades: $15.
Socks Yeah! Fingering, one of the great sock yarns: 25% off.
Vivacious 4ply by Fyberspates, hand dyed and gorgeous: 25% off.
Vivacious DK by Fyberspates. A thicker weight, absolutely dreamy: 25% off.
While We’re At It: A Spectacular Giveaway!
Jane Saffir, the proprietor of Jade Sapphire Exotic Fibres, got wind of the MDK Knitting Getaway, and she of all people knows how to have a good time. She also knows that our love of her cashmere and linen yarn, Sylph, has no bounds. So she’s set us up for a giveaway: she has generously provided six skeins of Sylph in the shade Rustle—the color made famous by Kay Gardiner whose Shakerag Top in Rustle remains one of the year’s drapiest drapefests.
Also included will be a copy of Modern Daily Knitting Field Guide No. 6: Transparency, featuring Amy Christoffers’s Shakerag Top pattern.
How to enter the giveaway? Two steps:
- Sign up to subscribe to Snippets at the bottom of this page. Our Saturday morning newsletter provides all the week’s MDK news and specials. (If you’re already subscribed, you’re fine.)
- Leave a comment below with your favorite camp memory.
Entries will be accepted until 11:59 pm Central time, Sunday, June 10, 2018. A random winner will be drawn from all entries.
Love,
Ann
Each year my knitting guild has a weekend retreat. It is so much fun, just knitting and eating and visiting with each other. We also have a couple of classes and this year we’re doing a minis swap.
I have never been to a camp. Would love to go. Thanks!
The smell of pine needles in the sun at Girl Scout camp
That takes me back!
Running back to main camp from a tent camp area in a storm with lightening BALLS!! Scary, exciting and unforgettable!
I’ve never been to camp, but it seems that it would have been fun, except for the bugs -ugh!!
At Girl Scout camp, I loved waking up before the other girls. Just to hear the birds waking up and the quiet morning begin.
Squam 2015. A transformative experience.
Only went to camp once as a kid and was very homesick the whole week – too bad they didn’t have knitting – I LOVE knitting getaways as an adult! 🙂
I have never attended a knitting camp but love the thought of it.
Canoeing, of course!
Campfires and the smell of smoke in my hair the next morning. Thanks for the giveaway!
As a kid, I couldn’t wait to come home.
First year I cried because I was scared and didn’t want to go. First day back at dinner I burst into tears and proclaimed “I’m going back next year if I have to walk back!”
At girl guide camp I thought there was a bear in our tent and ran back to the campfire to get help. Turns out it was just a fellow camper …
Ha!!
Never been to camp – but it sounds like fun! Need to see if there is a knitting getaway near me in NY! I could use a break!
Went to camp once as a kid and hated it! But, my family used to stay at a “camp” (what everyone called the cottages/houses on the lake) on a lake in Vermont every summer. I loved sleeping on the upstairs porch.
Braiding lanyards out of gimp (guimp?) – when I wasn’t exactly sure what a lanyard was for, in the big arts ‘n crafts barn when it was raining.
I went to Brownie camp and we made situpons and sang camp songs. As a kid living in a rough part of the city, it was a look into the forest world, and Making, and singing, that has shaped my life ever since. Now I live in the country with a garden, a sewing machine, a spinning wheel and lots of yarn.
My favourite camp memory is from being a counselor. I had to sleep in my van and woke up to it totally encased in toilet paper! I had the last laugh as I rolled down the window, climbed out and startled the perpetrators who thought I was truly stuck! Fun times.
Camping in the Great Smokey Mountains in an original VW Camper Bus in the mid “70’s” with my two sons, hubby and very dear MIL … seeing the bears and posted signs that “read” … don’t feed the bears … but they were so cute.
Perhaps we could spin bear hair (taken from a living breathing live of course) with wool or alpaca?
A lover of Mother Nature, Animals, KNITTING and all things related!
Have fun for me … living in “the Bermuda Triangle”
Sandra
Coming back from camp feeling I had climbed mountains I’d never thought myself capable of climbing.
Thanks for the giveaway!
Camping with our kids on Prince Edwards Island, summer of 1990 or thereabouts . It rained and stormed …..blew away some tents, but we stayed warmin a cook shelter lean-to, watching to be sure our tent did not blow away, too. We found smooth stones and warmed them on the wood burning cook stove, and used them as hat warmers. I taught our daughter to knit.
That trip inspired a family saying which gets trotted out whenever there is a crisi….”Things look bad now, but it will make a great story someday!” Very comforting!
Edit to above..”used them as HAND warmers!”
I was intrigued by the idea of hat warmers!
I’ve never been to a knitting camp, but as a younger me, would always collect all the creatures when we camped!
Favorite camp memories – blue skies, walking in the woods, the smell of the oiled tent cloth and musn’t forget the itch of the mosquito!
When I was a kid, my grandmother had a summer house on a lake in Massachusetts. We always called it “camp.” Going there was “going up to camp.” Everyone who had houses on that lake referred to it as camp. It was a Thing.
My favorite memory is the first visit of the summer. The house was an a-frame built into the side of a hill that sloped down to the water front. As soon as the car stopped in front of the house, my brother and I were out in a flash, dashing down the hill to look at the lake and dip our fingers and toes in to test the temperature. That first view of the lake every year will always be my fondest memory!
My favorite memory of camp has to be making crafts!!
I have only ever been to field hockey camp, back in high school. My favorite memory of that is going back the second year to find they had new rules to cover all the mischief our team got into the year before.
I’ve only been to camp for grown ups, aka classes at Harrisville Designs. My favorite memories from there are evenings of wine and knitting in the boardinghouse with my classmates after an incredible day in the studio.
This is not necessarily a “favorite” memory; more of an “only” memory: using the plastic mesh bags from produce to wash our dishes. I look back appreciating that we did not generate a small mountain of paper or styrofoam plates and note with nostalgic satisfaction that I am now an avid recycler and I still save those mesh bags to crochet into dish scrubbies.
My first camp was as a ten year old, a statewide 4-H conference in gorgeous Gunnison, CO, where kids of all ages came to learn essential life skills as knitting, sewing, leadership, and much more!
Camp! I went to a day camp that I hated, and then a sleepaway arty camp that I liked. One summer I went to each of the crafty areas and made a dragon of some kind.
Favorite camp memory………..A man waking up the campground singing “Oh What A Beautiful Morning” as loud and off-key as he possibly could. It was hysterical!
Knitting camp with a friend at the barn abbey in harmony indiana. She took the top bunk and I’m forever grateful!
Boondoggle! I was destined to be a knitter….
summer camp was a haven away from the city!but the mosquitoes ate me alive!
I loved craft time!! Girl Scout camp always had fun projects to make and my favorite was the keychains. Weaving the colors of plastic together was fun and just like knitting you could carry it with you to work on.
Singing “99 Bottles of Beer” on the bus on the way to camp!
Love all things MDK
Camping with my family. My nephew and I would start hiking after breakfast and wander the mountains until dark. Knitting camp would be even better!
My favorite camp memory are the early morning big breakfasts.
Skits at the variety show. Please someone put together some skits!
Learning water survival skills by intentionally swamping a canoe on Case Lake at Camp Cassaway in northern Minnesota on a rainy 55 degree summer day. As an 11-year old, I LOVED it! At 70 I can still recall the thrill of it.
I became an archery instructor (in about 2 days!?!) and loved teaching it!
I remember the smell of the lake (Lake Huron) and the piney smell of the cabins. Thanks for this lovely giveaway.
5 hr car ride with best buds Susan and Susan to go the knitters review retreat. Loved it all 5 times.
Pine Lake Camp. Wisconsin. 10 years old.
I lived for 2 pm every day, when we were allowed an hour in the craft cabin! Making such lovelies as tile-covered screw-on wood earrings for my mother, (you can just sense how dainty those weren’t) I was already a “maker!” If only they’d given us Wool instead!
I went on short camping trips with my family and with Girl Scouts, and after high school I worked one summer as a Girl Scout camp counselor. A new primitive camping area had been cleared out and opened, and I was one of two teens hired to lead about 32 girls. The area had been cleared in the winter, when no one realized it was a breeding ground for copperheads. They were everywhere, by the dozens! Not their fault, but we were issued garden hoes to catch or kill them. The campers were so freaked out we ended up catching a few harmless snakes live for them to handle and release to make the point that most snakes are not to be feared or harmed.
OMG. As a serious snake-o-phobe this is my worst nightmare. Reminds me of the horrors of a Girl Scout Camp I went to in Taiwan. Forty-two poisonous snakes killed in two weeks. My big memory is of playing cards and seeing a cobra swaying behind the girl across from me. Desperate, I tried eating bugs, hoping to make myself sick so I would be sent home. To no avail.
I went to a camp for kids that was set up like a western town. We rode horses and learned how to care for them, amongst other things. I got my first pair of Levi’s to wear so I could really be a cowgirl! It was a great week!
Asking my dad, when he picked me up from year 2– did you know it’s the same songs and stuff every year? Huh. Maybe not for me again next year.
Pancakes, my favorite memory of camp!
Making s’mores over the campfire.
So many great memories and things that shaped me. Singing grace in the mess hall with all the other girls before meals; wading in the creek with our shoes on; walking to the restrooms at night and watching the flashlight beacon disappear as you raised it into the sky; wishing the week would never end.
I loved being with friends and toasting marshmallows on the fire!!
Definitely arts and crafts time and canoeing. I loved camp as a kid, but not going by myself. I still love camp (and camping), but now I’m always sure to bring family and friends along.
I remember connecting with one particular camp leader at the one camp I attended. Later that summer I traveled to Scandinavia with my family and I had promised to send him a postcard, so I did.
My favorite camp experience was a three-week backpack in the Sierras a few years ago. I took along Anne Hanson’s Wheaton as my knitting project.
My favorite memory is doing crafts in the craft cabin!
Chaperoning high school band camp, being in the lobby in jamies @ 6 am, sending the kids out to the practice field, then all the chaperones going back to bed.
I have never been lucky enough to get to a camp – but there’s always a first time! Would love to go sometime!
S’mores 🙂 and the smell of pine needles as we walked to the dining hall in the morning…
We go to our family camp at Green Lake in Maine. Best memories are campfire nights, roasting marshmallows and eating s’mores with peanut butter cups, my daughter’s favorite.
Being surrounded by people who understand my love of knitting and don’t judge me for having a stash!
I only went to camp once. I vaguely remember the cabins and where we ate—ha, ha! Your retreat sounds great.
I loved sleeping in the top bunk! I didn’t care about having to climb up or down. I just loved being up high!
LOL…I was part of the year which got tossed out of church camp! We had a water fight turn massive and flooded cabins.
Sitting by the fire, listening to my husband repeat impossibly long Robert Service poems much to the amazement of our three little boys.
I have never been to camp but last week I went to the @wingandaprayer fiber retreat. It was just like camp-activities, food, new friends and fun! So my favorite memory is watching Tammy do cartwheels on the lawn.
Knitting camp would be far better than my first camp memory…..Brownie
Troop only one night at camp…no tents, just cots. Our enthusiastic pretty
Campy leader had us tie our shoes by their laces to the wooden part of the cot so that bugs would not crawl into them!! That was enough to keep me awake all night. Needless to say the next time I went “to camp” was a dude ranch type of set up. This was about 30 years later with two young sons and my husband! Better experience and food!
As a young girl, I went to Girl Scout camp in the summer. My favorite memories from then are learning to canoe and the beauty of the forest at the end of Day flag ceremony. As an adult, we have a park model RV at a camp site here in Illinois. I belong to a weekly craft group and in July I am teaching the ladies to knit!
the “otherworldly” experience when you are far, far away from normal family life – and you forget all about that family for just one week
Getting out of the tent , going for a swim while watching the sunrise.
Loved camp songs. I still remember some of them!
So many excellent camp memories make it hard to choose. But I remember my mom picking me up at the bus after my first time away and singing camp songs all the way home.
Girl Scout camp in Lawton, OK. Campfires, tents, older girls I so looked up to and Native Americans sharing their heritage through dance. Wonderful!
Even as a little girl cooking was something I enjoyed. I remember being fascinated by making Hobo Stew in a coffee can. Yes, back in the day coffee came in tin cans. It was sublime. Memories of it take me back to the bus ride song fest and lots of little girls just being little girls. We have certainly lost some things along the way.
Exploring in the forest and finding a big wild raspberry patch and picking yogurt containers full. So delicious!
Every year between ages 9 and 14 my BFF Shari and I would go to 4H camp for a week. Those weeks were magical for me, sleeping in cabins or tents, hiking the woods, crafting and swimming. This year, she and I will be attending camp again at the Medomak fiber arts retreat in Maine. I can totally understand the DEFCON 1 level of excitement and anticipation!!
Wendy, both of my brothers went to Medomak Camp (just for boys), and it was a life-shaping experience for them. The camp doesn’t exist any more, but I hope you enjoy being in the area! Beautiful country.
I’m leaving for the airport now! See you in a few hours…can’t believe it’s here and hat I get to come!
I wish I could attend the knitting camp but am sending you best wishes for a successful event!
I talked my mom into sending me to camp one year, and I hated every minute of it. My favorite part was when it was over and I could walk out of those tick-infested woods for good and leave my fellow campers behind me.
When I was about ten years old I went away to camp for a week – my first time away from home. I still have very fond memories of that time. I remember how thrilled I was to receive a letter from mom – she hadn’t forgotten me!
My favorite camp memory is a week in Northern California with our children. It was lovely to be away from everything and relax together, with no cellphone service. I just remember the smell of the pine trees and the evening campfires
My favorite camp memory was my introduction to s’mores at Girl Scout Camp! Oh my! The yummy gooey-ness…and sitting around the campfire at night, singing and listening to ghost stories…making s’mores…!
Growng up I attended day camps, but not overnighters. It sure seems lke it would be fun!
I have attended a couple of weekend knitting getaways and they were a blast!!
The closest thing to a camp memory I have- (never went to camp as a kid) was the summers my family would spend with my Dad’s family at Lake Oconomowoc in WI- cookouts and waterskiing with the cousins- special memories!
I worked at an urban day camp during high school summers and fell in love with the lifeguard. Still in love, 45 years later!
I’m not a camper but would love a knitting camp!
4 H camp with lots of kids, woods, crafts, fun and carefree:)
I always enjoyed the campfire at camp!
I grew up in a family without a lot of money, so I’ve never been to camp. But I love being outdoors and doing outdoor activities. Hope you all have a glorious time!
This weekend is also the amazing Squam Art Workshop. I’ve attended the last two years and to say I am missing dipping my feet in the cold New Hampshire lake would be a serious understatement.
Camping with the family by a lake in Maine. Wonderful.
My favorite part of camp – getting away from a houseful of little siblings and meeting new people.
My favorite memory is sitting by the warm campfire roasting marshmallows with friends, something about the mix of having warm woolens and sitting by the fire reminiscing about stuff with friends
The camp was for wolf ecology, and against all expectations, we actually saw a wolf on the last day.
Alas, no camp memories as I never went to camp as a child. However I’ve made up for it by beginning to attend knitting retreats. Up this weekend – Strung Along with Stephanie Pearl McBee. I am so excited!
I spent a week at Camp Bay Breeze Girl Scout campgrounds in Maryland many moons ago. Loved everything about it especially singing before dinner, after dinner, and around th camp fire. Thanks for letting he giveaway!
I remember Camp Bay Breeze! It was beautiful!
My favorite memory was riding home on the bus with Richie Burger. I never actually liked camp but Richie was a great friend and made the whole thing bearable!
I learned how to shave my legs at summer camp!!
Unfortunately I’ve never been to camp but I’m sure that if I had I would have spent all my time knitting
One of the years I went to Squam (2013 maybe), I recall the infamous dock incident. My cabin mates and I were sitting on our dock peacefully knitting in the sun. A few fellow knitters joined us. We noticed the platform lifted a few times but it wasn’t until a boat passed that the entire thing gave way and plunged us into the water, screaming and laughing. Needless to say, a few cell phones were ruined, but only because everyone was too busy holding up their precious knitting above the water. That was one of my favorite memories. Well, that and later hearing about how Franklin Habit scared off a black bear that tried to enter his cabin overnight because someone left food out.
Cooking over a fire, canoeing ,and fishing!
The best part about camp was always craft day! Candy from the tuck shop was pretty exciting too.
I never went to camp as a child, but I’ve been to knit camp as an adult. Learning to knit two socks at a time was amazing!
The only camp I’ve been to was 6th grade when we spent 3 days in little cabins. Of course the best parts were the crafts, but I hated all the rest. I’m a city kid, I need real beds and bathrooms.
I learned darkroom photography at summer camp
Favorite camping memory is staying up all night watching the Leonid meteor shower on a mountain in Northern California. It was incredible!
My favorite camp memory is of singing at the campfire…especially the last night, when it felt like the biggest tragedy in the world to leave your friends and go home. It was also the first time I realized that life at home went on without me. The earth didn’t stop turning at home just because I was away! Amazing. 🙂
Tent camping. Torrential rain. Woke up with so much water under the tent that I thought we were sleeping on a waterbed. Good times.
I reluctantly went to camp the first time at age 10 and quickly came to love it. It’s where I learned to swim, dive and row a boat and made some great friendships. The lake we swam in had leeches – which we calmly pulled off one another when we got out of the water!
Cooking an egg on a buddy burner with girl scouts!
I only went to camp once, in the Czech Republic while visiting my grandmother for the summer. My favourite day there involved the entire camp picking wild blueberries in the woods, which then got made into blueberry dumplings for dinner. No blueberry has tasted as good since.
All of the woodsy smells….
I remember going to Girl Guide camp with my sister Sue. The wardrobe was BLUE, like the uniform at that time! Blue shirts, blue shorts, blue sweater and socks…. My mum went through our cupboard, found as much of the long list as she could, and dyed it all blue over the kitchen stove. My happiest memory is our voices singing the camp songs which were almost all new to me, a child of immigrants.
Our family “camped” once in a cabin by the lake. Each night there were 2 horrific thunderstorms leading to lots of ghost and terror stories shared during the night. Great fun!
Girl Scouts and lots of singing!
Camp is a time for a full heart and dirt under your fingernails… Whether 5 or 35, a chance to getaway always puts balm on my soul. I remember the shared comraderie while learning new things with a group of folks who, once strangers, then become my lifelong sisters.
Girl Scout camp was a favorite part of many summers growing up-loved all the activities and cooking over the campfire. Lots of fun memories!
I remembering waking up in the back of our station wagon with my sister because there wasn’t enough room in the pop-up camper for everyone! Have fun girls!
My favorite camp memories are always breakfast! (But then again, aren’t favorite memories in all categories food related?) Eating an egg fried out over a camp stove with toast crisped on a stick and a little burnt around the edges……………listening to the morning sounds…………. getting ready for the first swim of the day! Ah, yes!
My favorite week of every year was horse camp in Ontario, Canada. They didn’t muck it with anything else, just 7 days of nothing but horses. Heaven for a horse-crazed girl. I still remember my horse, George. A gigantic old guy with a backbone that nearly split me in two on bareback day. I loved George!
Camping with our kids in an Ontario National Park in Canada. Spending the evening listening to a Bluegrass impromptu concert and then going for a walk in the woods after sundown to identify the night sounds. Priceless.
Watching my dad use his penknife to whittle points on the ends of sticks to roast marshmallows. The anticipation for a little girl was wonderful!
I never went to traditional camp, but I loved sitting around a fire in the evening and listening to the frogs, etc.
I went to music camp where we put on a production at the end of the week. Always enjoyed the final performance.
Girl Scout camp, Camp TexLake, just outside Austin, July 20, 1969. The day we walked on the moon, all the girls were brought into the dining the lodge, and the TV had been brought to the camp so we could watch. It was surreal.
Thanks for the question! The SITUPONS! A first step for every good Brownie. The S’mores! The songs, the skits, the hikes, I will add the poison ivy!
hosting my grandchildren at “nana camp” complete with daily crafts, field trips, and all around new adventures every day! love creating memories for them!
What a fantastic give away and the weekend sounds sublime ❤️
I never got to go to camp. I think I would have loved it.
My favorite camp experience was riding a horse down the woodsy trails when I was ten. I was so excited!
Now my family of five are regular campers and my favorite time is dawn with a steaming mug of coffee and the sounds of the waves off of the lake before anyone else is awake. Leaving in two weeks for our inaugral trip. Cant wait!!!
only went to girl scout camp once, I like room service better
IKathleen, I was laughing so hard at your post, I accidentally hit post before I wrote anything
Absolutely love camping – sleeping in a tent underneath the stars is the best!
I can only leave a memory of visiting our daughter at camp, a wonderful one up in Vermont. Never went to camp myself.
For two summers when we were little, my sister and I attended CYO camp. We would take the bus each day and pass by the Nabisco factory, and the camp counselor would tell us to all take a breathe in that cookie smell! We would also have to drink a cup of water first before we got to drink fruit punch or lemonade from the big coolers. That’s one of the reasons why I drink a cup of water at work before drinking my coffee!
I used to love going to GA (Girl’s Auxillary) camp at Palo Dura Canyon, Texas. My favorite part was going around in the evening to meet girls from the other churches.
Never got to go to camp but maybe someday!! Right now in s Hampton Inn reading this post- that’s camping , right???
I’ve never been to a knitting camp or retreat but would love to attend one.
My favorite camping trip was a trip in a small motorhome thru New England and Nova Scotia, including digging for clams and lots of lobster eaten on a dock fresh off the boat.
My favorite camp memory is from our first camping trip to the Smokey mountains. We foolishly thought our food would be safe from the bears if covered up by a tablecloth. The bears loved the brownies.
Favorite camp memories:
lying on a cot in a large platform tent with the sides up, a breeze blowing through the pine trees;
building a miniature river complete with waterfalls down the side of a hill in the forest with my best friend;
excavating a house foundation ;
All in New Mexico, all, I think, with the Girl Scouts. New Mexico is the most beautiful place on earth!
I went to an Athletic Leadership camp in high school – I was chosen from my entire grade as Athletic Association President, and so got to go to the camp. As a cottager, I never went to camp – we always went to the cottage for the summer. Camp was amazing! Everyone there had the same interests! I met people there that became lifelong friends – two weeks in the summer of 1980, and almost 40 years later, I’m still in touch!
When I was 12, I attended a church sponsored camp. I had never ridden a horse and inexplicably ended up on a horse named Satan who had a will of his own. A horse named Satan at a church camp – really?
Boundary Waters, Minnesota, as an adult
Best memory—- Knitting around the campfire at night with a headlamp on my forehead !
I can just picture it!
No organized summer camp in my childhood but weeks and weeks at a friend’s cabin – getting sunburned in the canoe, fishing, sleeping outside in our sleeping bags when we could. Nothing like the feel of sand in your sleeping bag when you’ve got a bad sunburn… 😉
I never had the chance to go to camp but would love to be at Sewanee this week. The more Shakerags I see, the more I want to put this on my list.
Diving into a crisp, cool lake on a hot day. The best!
I never got the opportunity to go to camp when I was a kid but I was always envious of my friends who got to go to summer camp.
Camp to me is swimming in the lake! Jumping off the dock and swimming to the floating dock is so much fun! Water is always cold and then it warms up. Early morning or late afternoon. Just the best!
No actual camp for me, but I meet with knitting friends on a weekly basis. May I call this my “knitting day camp?”
There were a few Girl Scout camp out weekends but I never attended proper camp. Plenty of outdoor time though, long walks in the woods. I grew up in Connecticut so the fall walks were especially beautiful.
My favorite memories are the songs around the campfire at night
Favorite camp memory: morning coffee made on the camp stove…the sun is rising and I’m knitting. Beautiful and peaceful
Visiting Day- we were not allowed to leave the camp- my parents would sneak me out every yer and take me to lunch for real food!
Singing “Come Dancing” with a pack of girls, complete with hairbrush microphones.
I’d love to go to a knitting or craft retreat! My favorite camp memories are actually of being a counselor instead of a camper. I was kind of a serious kid/teenager, but when I started working at camps all my goofiness came out. Plus it was so much fun to hang out with the other counselors after the kids went to bed.
My favorite camp memory….banana boats and s’mores done by the campfire. Yum!
We were camping at Sleeping Bear Dunes in an inexpensive tent. Around 1:00 am it began to rain and the rain got more intense until it was raining in our tent. We had to make a run for the car and then do our best to get some fitful sleep until morning.
I didn’t go to camp as a kid, but have done some wonderful camping trips with friends. Biking, canoeing, kayaking the Maine islands.
I always love the anticipation of learning new skills and meeting new creative people. I’m always so revved up and inspired when it’s over.
I was lucky as a young teenager to go to the Westchester Music and Art Camp in Croton, NY, in the 1960s. It was totally free to residents and otherwise my parents could never have afforded anything like it. I have wonderful memories of playing the flute outdoors, taking art classes, making great friends, etc. I already had been on summer long camping trips with my family since I was a little girl so sleeping in a cabin on a bed was luxurious compared to a tent.
I have never been to camp! Attending a knitting retreat is a top priority on my personal bucket list, and I’d love to attend MDK’s next year. Sewanee is a totally doable 8-9 hour drive from my home!
I’ve never been to camp, but I sure am looking forward to your posts from Sewanee!
Church camp with my best friend. But was still homesick 🙂
Never went to a camp as a kid but my family went camping a lot. My favorite memories are running the forest trails around the lake and make fruit pies with the sandwich maker thingee in the campfire.
Outdoor Havdalah (a Jewish prayer that ends the Sabbath) by the lake. Imagine hundreds of campers in a BIG circle, arms around their friends’ shoulders, singing together, as night falls on Massachusetts–so sweet!
Singing camp songs, led by enthusiastic counselors with crazy names! Like “Kooky.” And campfires.
Girl Scout camp and the songs! I can still bust one out — they were silly and so much fun.
Making hobo dinners and banana boats over a Girl Scout camp fire.
My favourite camp memory was camping in the New Territories with the girl guides in Hongkong… back in the 1970s. As the NT are now part of mainland China I am never likely to return there – but I would ove to before I die. And I knit whiile I was there! (I was around 9 at the time…)
Swimming in the lake (and taking the train to get there). Worst camp memory – having to eat what we fondly called birdseed porridge for breakfast EVERY day. UGH. Thanks for the chance to win.
Tie dying at Girl Scout camp!
My favorite camp memory is learning how to care for my first horses…50 years, and the love is still there 🙂
I wasn’t a camp kid-boo! I’d sure like to go to this grown up camp though!!
Grew up going to camp in Monteagle TH – just next to Sewanee. There were several animals who lived at the camp including a host who lived to steal things out of pockets. Wish I could be with you. Have fun!
Should be TN
My favorite Camp memory is singing with all my friends by the camp fire at night 0 then of course came the ghost stories that scared us all 🙂
I’ve only been to camp once, when I was 16. My favorite memory is of going to Grandfather Mountain. It was amazing
Ghost stories around the campfire!
I loved the birdsong at first light.
I never went to camp as a kid, but I was a camp counselor one summer in college. I taught “ecology” to a bunch of city kids, who had all kinds of amazing, expensive activities at their 8-week sleepaway camp: a ropes course, zipline, climbing wall, horseback riding, etc., but all the 8-11 year-old boys could talk about when their parents came to visit was how awesome “ecology class” was. I had a set of $1 butterfly nets and some plastic bug homes, and we spent all our time in the woods and creeks catching creepy crawlies, and the kids thought it was the best thing they’d ever done. Hearing their slightly befuddled moms tell me that catching bugs and crayfish with me was their sons’ favorite part of camp is a memory I love.
I survived the canoe out trip! Torrential rain, forgotten tents, sleeping under canoes which did not deter mosquitos! And a swamped food canoe so we ate baked beans and marshmallows for 3 days. It was memorable 🙂
Ohhh I loved camp! I went to girl scout camp a few times and to French language camp in Minnesota. I was an extremely outgoing kid and my favorite part was meeting all the new people, staying up late talking to the girls in my cabin, and promising to write each other letters when we went home (which only ever lasted a few months but…. the memory of new friends was still fun)
Camping in Maine when I was young! Cooking lobster on an open fire can be challenging but well worth it! And the stars in the sky at night are spectacular!
Twisted my ankle on the first day and got to go home. I guess I’m not much of a camp girl.
Well I was not really a wilderness or camp person – very much a city girl – but I did go to Girl Guide camp a number of years. When I made a one-match fire I was rather pleased with myself.
Thanks for the great contest!
Hanging out at the bug juice (Kool-aid) stand under the trees listening to Peter Frampton playing on the radio after a long afternoon canoeing on the lake
Our local knitting group started a retreat about seven years ago, still going strong. We are planning another one for this October.
Favorite camp memory: going to Camp Tuckabatchee with my sister, and sailing little paper boats with lit candles in them on the lake on the last night!
All I really remember from 4-H camp is how, if you were caught with your elbows on the table at any meal, the entire dining room would break out in song about you. I don’t think my elbows have touched a table in 40 years.
My favorite camp memory is being made right now – my husband and I are camped in our shamelessly comfy Airstream on a grassy spot next to an actual babbling brook. Can it get any better? And of course I have my knitting with me!
Horses at camp! Gave me my life long love of riding, especially in the woods.
Not exactly a camp, but anytime my four (now three, we miss you Pam!) best friends and I have had a sleepover over the past 40+ years, it’s like we are twelve again.
I absolutely loved camp! I went to Girl Scout camp every summer when I was a girl, and I’m always game for camping now, although I’m out of practice. My favorite camp memory has to be simply sitting by the campfire, singing songs with my new camp friends, utterly content and tuckered out from hiking in the Alaskan woods. (Too bad I didn’t know how to knit then!)
Definitely the campfire and the S’mores!
Junior Catholic Daughters girls camp in Michigan, making a new friend that I still love 50 years later!
finding a scorpion at the bottom of the camp pool
my favorite camp memory is from Michaux at age 10. We were tasked with making a home in the woods,I remember nestling down in a bed of tall ferns and thinking I could live there forever.The smell of the woods,fragility but reliance of the ferns, and the quiet are flashing in my mind right now.
Something in fern green should be my next project perhaps.
Lisa
My favorite camp memory? That’s easy! I badly cut my finger cutting up potatoes for a supper of ground beef and potatoes buried in the fire in aluminum foil, and the very cute and older male counselor told me all was well since I had not bled into the dinner packets. A little flirting goes a long way toward easing an awkward moment for an introverted kid. Best dinner I ever had in the open air.
Fun things to do all day long. Craft time was making a lanyard out of that plastic yarn!
i never been camping or gone to a camp – city girl! But I have been on knitting retreats with Laura Nelkin which are great!
Eating fresh sticky buns on the porch and watching a thunderstorm rage 🙂
My favorite camp memories are that it is a retreat away from other life demands; you are free to enjoy friends, knitting, outdoors, and learning.
S’mores around a campfire.
I have never been to knitting camp, but i went to CampFire camp, church camp, and 4H camp. I was in 4H for several years and learned to sew…now why didn’t they teach knitting?
I have never been to camp. I have enjoyed reading camp memories though. Thanks for a chance in the giveaway!
Never been to camp, but I literally just retired this week. I have nothing to stop me now!
Best part of camp continues to this day: lifelong friends!
I have never been to camp, other than a sleepover in a leaky tent on a rainy cold night, complete with ants (!) for the finale of a Girl Scouts day camp. It was a defining moment, let’s say….
my only camp I went to was Squam in New Hsmshire. I would love to attend the next MDK camp. Have a great time this year and I will look for notice on your next camp.
I loved the sing-a-longs around the campfire and cooking stews on the campfire. I loved the crafts and kind of hated the athletics…never could pass the basic swimmer’s test. I loved the “bug juice” punch, which was probably just artificially colored sugar water. As a kid, I loved that feeling of getting on the camp bus, leaving my apartment in the city, and riding to the freedom of 2 glorious weeks in the country.
Horse camp in Alaska when I was in middle school. There was a mud hole on the grounds that the counselors would let us play in and have mud fights. I’d never seen mud that deep before. Now I live in the NE and see more mud than I want to every March/April!!
Only dreamed of going to a fiber camp! I imagine that it must be wonderful to not get judgmental looks when seeking out the best light to instagram a WIP. <3
Making a sit-upon in girl scout camp!!
I already get Snippets. Sorry I didn’t register in time for the retreat….. sounds divine!
Camp memories for me include spiders in the cabin, static in the sheets, dirty feet and my sister getting lost in the woods. My mom had great food tho. Only camped twice as a kid.
I have never been to camp myself. I used to enjoy dropping my brothers off at Boy Scout camp. It always looked like fun.
Tubing at the lake in the Adirondacks. It was relaxing and scenic, making the long trek back to the cabin totally worth it!
Learning to make god’s eyes out of yarn and popsicle sticks in the upstairs art barn (above the canoes) at my YMCA sleep-away camp in New Hampshire. The smell up there was pure camp: lake water, soggy bathing suits, bug sprayed skin and those chalky tempra paints.
My favorite memories are of Camp Watchaug: paddling a canoe, sailing a Sunfish, and generally enjoying the comradery of kids I only saw at camp.
I was racking my brains… camp, camp, never been to camp. But wait, yes! Once only, how could it have slipped? My whole family (9 of us) went, once, from Florida up to Northern Georgia, to Callaway Gardens, known for other things, like golf and water-skiing competitions. Huge lake.
But at this time, the place where the Circus! majors from University of Florida joined the circus in their off-season home and held mini-circus camps for kids. Rope-climbing, clown lessons, trampolines, performances w/ really bad jokes, swimming, fireflies!!, and it must have been the Fourth, because the best fireworks I have ever seen to this day, from off the lake beach.
I was ten.
I won the “Miss Ugly” contest at YWCA summer camp when I was 11. For the talent portion of the program, I hacked away on my violin and “sang” Mary Had a Little Lamb.
I have very few “camp” memories, but I did enjoy camping at the Tahquamenon Falls as a young adult. Today, my camping is relegated to Holiday Inn stays!
I was a jr counselor at a camp with 5 year olds….I still remember their sweet faces who loved the forest, loved swimming, arts and crafts…..they actually loved everythingI I hope those now 60 year olds still have that love for the world!
Going to a week of day camping when I was in grade school. I met several of my future high school classmates during that camp. We had several wonderful outings to sights in Northern New Mexico.
I loved sleepaway camp, but my younger sister didn’t! The first year we went, she sent a letter home asking for $3 and her black patent leather shoes. Apparently she thought $3 and being dressed appropriately would enable her to get from the mountains of upstate New York back home to the beaches of Eastern Long Island on her own. We laughed about that for a long time 🙂
I loved everything about Camp Winterberry, but especially wearing a wood chip name badge and learning a dance for the closing event.
I’ve attended the same knitting camp, held twice a year, for over 15 years. Basically the same group of ladies too! This is the only time I see several of the gals so each successive retreat becomes my favorite! So fun to catch up! SKSS!
Watching my son get married this past January, with three of his former camp counselor buddies as his groomsmen. At the end of the reception, a larger group of camp friends formed a “campfire circle” and they sang together “Wagon Wheel”, a Bob Dylan song that was a favorite from their summer camp days together. It was a testament to the defining time that camp can be in the lives of young people.
The camaraderie and friendships made.
I remember my first time at camp I became homesick and wrote my parents to come get me. Of course, they didn’t. By the end of the week, when it was time to go home, I met them wanting to sign up for an additional week. Good life lesson.
As kids we went to camp at a converted farm each year for “fresh air” (aka to give mom a break). In my teens I did it as a CIT for the 3-and unders and loved it. Especially nap time when my best friend and 2 others would escape to play croquet behind the farmhouse in a sprawling boxwood garden. Now 60, I can’t inhale the scent of boxwood without feeling a rush of heat and summer and summer love.
Sleeping in a tent big enough for six with the sleeping bags all spread out with air mattresses to keep us comfortable and a lantern making it just light enough to find your way to your bed and see the tent walls.
Subscribed!
I have never been to camp though
In my neighborhood, camp was for rich kids, and I wasn’t one of those. But my very favorite summer camp movie, Little Darlings, sure made it look… um… educational!
Only went one year, no good memories; but when I graduated from college, about 20 people from my church went down to Costa Rica to paint cabins at a camp in the mountains outside San Jose, and we stayed there for 2 weeks. We had women in our cabin from high school to a former nurse in her 70’s. She told us wild stories of her days as a nurse including what it was like to bathe older women with boobs being flipped all over the place. Our unofficial camp song was a variation of ‘Do your ears hang low’. TOTALLY changed my view of ‘old people’ (and now I myself am just 3 years from 70). If only we’d had knitting it would have been perfect!
Winning the “Most Improved Camper” award at the YWCA day camp when I was 8 or so. I won because I finally stopped crying everyday after my mom dropped me off. Lol
I went to a girl scout camp weekend once at a local park not terribly far from home when I was about 9. At night we sang songs around a campfire and one of the leaders played the guitar. It was magical
I spent 2 weeks at a girl Scout camp in 6th grade – my first time away from home. I cried the whole first week and sent postcards begging my parents to come get me. The second week, my postcards begged them to let me stay longer!
Thank you for the giveaway opportunity!! I am already a subscriber so I’ve got that going for me…however, I have no camp memories, camp was just not something my parents could afford although with 4 kids in 3 years, I’m sure they would have loved to ship us all to a camp lol We were all in the hospital at the same time to have our tonsils removed – does that count?! Enjoy the weekend – looking forward to hearing all about it!
Camp. Hmm, my mom checking my head for ticks after every day at Camp Miska?
But I like adult camps, with AC and nature just outside the door!
Going to sleep at Squam to the sound of the loons.
11 knitters. Most didn’t each other. Started going to Webs for a weekend. We stayed at a Residenve Inn so we could eat drink and Knit. We did this for 10 years. Best friends for ever and stashes to last forever.
Never been to camp would love to go to a retreat!!
My favorite camp memory is “stealing” ice from the counselors cabin. I am sure they were watching us while we shushed and giggled outside their window.High crimes!
Sitting around the campfire telling stories, singing songs and toasting marshmallows for s’mores!
Fifty years later I can still remember the lyrics to all of the songs I learned at my church camp!
Chilly mountain morning prayers (yes, it was a kid’s church camp), and cool evening vespers in the North Georgia Blue Ridge.
Oh my! I got so homesick at Girl Scout camp I was really sick! Then somehow I got over it and the remaining time flew by. Camp songs have stayed in my brain for 50++ years.
I’ve never been camping (the feel/thought of those little fly legs & feet crawling up my arm…), so have no memories to share.
My favourite camp memories involve spending one blissful week every summer at a place no one knew they were supposed to bully me. I loved that camp so much I went back as an adult to work as a nurse! My babies slept in a Pack and Play in the nurses’ cabin and became the camp mascots every summer.
Deprived childhood here – no camp, only unfettered neighborhood “gang” activity to provide a deep nostalgia for such days…. sigh. But as a very-adult now I would love knitting camp! Or a shake- rag kit
Swimming and singing with friends–frequently at the same time.
Sadly, I must report, I have never been camping 🙁 I want to go so badly and I am trying to convince my husband to let me have a try (I guess he has some not fun camping memories, hence his reluctance to go, lol). This yarn and the Shakerag Top pattern would be an excellent knitting project for my first camp experience, don’t you think, hahaha…..
What I loved about camp was walking around in the morning–the air was usually cool (it was a mountain camp), the birds were active, and the day was full of possibility.
Swimming in the beautiful pine tree surrounded lake and staying up late with flashlights whispering with the other girls about the cutest boy at camp.
My favorite camp memory is waking up to a cool crisp morning and discovering the raccoons had found out how to get into our food. There were marshmallows, graham crackers, and various other sundries all over our campsite. As a kid I thought it was amazing that such a relatively small animal could manage the clasps and locks, but I’m sure my Mom didn’t appreciate the willy nature of the visitors.
Falling asleep, snug as a bug, in my sleeping bag.
Didn’t go to camp myself, but loved visiting my girls in camp on visitors’ day❤️
I’ve been to a camp exactly but I’ve been camping and I probably knitted.
We did a “Jonah & the whale” skit at campfire one night at summer camp when I was a kid. My sleeping bag was blue, so I was the whale. We were a hit & that was the extent of my acting career. 🙂
Horseback riding!! Not-so-warm oatmeal for breakfast – ick!
I’ve never been to camp as a child but have been incred to friend’s camps over the years….and attended stitches a few times….which is like a camp! Would love this!
Hearing all the Redbirds right outside my tent— and then opening the tent flap window and seeing them up close. Priceless! Thanks for the fun article and the giveaway!!!
We had summer day camp at our elementary school every summer. I loved the crafts and games we played.
I’ve never been to camp. Sounds like fun!
My favorite camp memory is canoeing on a mirror-like lake in the morning, seeing loons diving and bobbing in the water, and hearing them call to each other.
Campfires, crafts, swimming in the lake at 4-H camp!
I loved sleeping in a cabin with walls like a screened porch. Thanks for the giveaway.
When the wall of our cabin fell – outward – long after lights-out leaving a bunch of scared girl scouts exposed to the rain.
Wet leaves, woods, camp songs, bug juice, letters from home and lanyard crafts!
Canoeing at the “bewitching hour” and hearing the loons that sounded like an organ playing.
I went to science camp in the Colorado mountains and got altitude sickness. I stayed in bed while everyone else was out having fun in the woods.
Canoeing, the rope swing, campfires, care packages!
Favorite camp memory: Swimming every afternoon. Plus CRAFTS. All the CRAFTS. XO
Staying up late and chatting with my friends in the cabin at night!
Staying up late around the campfires.
Fondly (and vividly) I remember sitting around a campfire in the evenings singing songs at Camp Tonnadoona, munching on s’mores on those summer nights some sixty years ago …
Sneaking off to hang out with the kitchen staff at Y camp. We thought they were so cool because they were older (probably teenagers themselves!) Can you say “Dirty Dancing”?
The sleep-away camp I went to served something gravy-y and gloppy but very good for dinners. And they had excellent bread.
Singing kumbahya ( I ha e no idea how to spell this) around the camp fire.
I just discovered MDK — too bad, because the Knit-away sounds like so much fun!!! Next year. . .
Girl Scout camp, “pigtail day,” wearing a piece of mosquito netting on my head tied into pigtails because I had a pixie cut.
Girl Scout camp. Loved the horseback riding but I will never forget the Clorox in the rinse water for the dishes. Every time I use bleach, I am transported to being ten again. Love it!,
I loved Silvia Hardings’s retreat. My knitting group does a 3 day retreat too that is so much fun.
My favorite camp memories come from my childhood and involve eating of course! Anything cooked over a campfire is to me a perfect meal – thanks for sharing the giveaway – good luck on your getaway and don’t forget the s’mores 🙂
Sitting by the campfire in the evening
s’mores at Girl Scout camp
Girl Scout camp is my only experience in camping. I remember sitting in a cool shady spot int he middle of the woods with my friends. I didn’t want anything to do with the sleepover though. Made sure I got out of there before nightfall!
In Maine, at night – lying on the rocks near the ocean, quietly talking to my son, watching for meteors.
I spent two unforgettable summers at camp in the ‘60s with some great memories. My favorites were horseback riding and canoeing.
Camping and crafting for a week with my mom, adult sisters and brother at the John C. Campbell craft school in Brasstown, NC.
My only real camp experience has been at Squam. I went for the first time 7 years ago, and promptly met a fantastic group of women from across North America. I’ve gone 3-4 times, and it has truly become one of my favorite places. Sad to not be there this year….
Closest memory is Camp Holiday Inn!! Swimming in the pool all day until dark, eating out of vending machines, and the occasional walk on a rocky beach (Daytona circa 1970’s)!
I met my husband at band camp in high school, so that’t it, hands down. 🙂
Traveling around the United States camping were some of the best times we had as a family. My favorite memory would have to be sleeping with the bears (because my older siblings were afraid to sleep outside the camper) in Yellowstone under the stars. Of course my parents pulled me into the camper when mama bears was sending her cubs up the tree.
Beanie Weanies!
Oh how I would love to win!
My favorite camp memory is from Camp Nekon, a Girl Scout Camp in or around Plymouth, MA. I attended one session there each year for several summers. I loved it when we went swimming in the lake, and then canoeing. The water was cool and crystal clear……very refreshing. We also did a number of crafts, but sadly: no knitting.
I volunteered at a camp in Cleveland in the 70s and it was a great experience working with inner city children.
Wish I had known about it. Maybe next time. Not to many retreats pop up around me.
Running through the woods, the smell and crunch of decomposing leaves, playing “camouflage” at Teatown Lakes Reservation summmer camp
4-H camp was great. Would love a knitting one.
During one Girl Scout camp, we did a night hike under the bright moon. We laid in the grass and looked up into the night sky, and one of the Girl Scout Moms improved music from a wooden flute.
My fav memory is from Camp Wilani, home of the famous “marshmallow tree” my brother had come to camp for the first time, and he hated to drink milk, which was basically the only beverage. So he told everyone he was allergic. That backfired on ice cream night, when the counselors wouldn’t give him any because of his “allergy” He learned his lesson though.
My favorite memory was 4-H camp (decades ago). Making new friends, sitting around the campfire and learning new skills, partaking in various activities, whispering late at night .. so much fun! It always seemed to be over way too soon!
My favorite camp memory is when the daddy long legs crawled on me at night, and I didn’t scream, but just killed it. No one wanted to believe me (I was a screamer)!
A janitor at my middle school anonymously paid for me to go to church camp for several years. I’ll never forget that generosity. Camp memories are even sweeter because of the gift that made them possible.
Being awakened every morning by Danny and the Jrs. Recording of “At the Hop” blaring from the camp loud speaker. Yes, i’m That old!
My favorite camp memory was inner tubing down the river on a sunny June day!
I went to a lot of camps as a kid. I think my favorite memory has to be horseback riding camp. We learned so much that summer. How to saddle a horse and brush it and keep it calm crossing a steam and just so many things that I don’t use today. But if we weren’t on a horse, we did lots of crafts, canoeing, hiking and just making memories. Probably the one real memory from that year was when we went on a trail ride. About halfway through the ride my horse completely freaked out. He took off running through the woods with me on his back! I was just a passenger at that point. Trees smacking me in the face briars scratching my arms. Fortunately, I managed to get a hold of him and we made it back to camp with minimal injuries. I know it sounds crazy but that was the best year at camp! I loved every minute.
Being a counselor-in-training at a Girl Scout camp back in the 60’s! Helping make meals in the old farmhouse kitchen. Brings a smile even now!
I never went to sleep-away camp, only a Campfire Girls day-camp which took place in the middle of an unshady field under a burning sun in West Texas. I remember learning how to did a latrine – useful skills for any 8 y/o girl. I remember goofy camp-songs (John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmit), and I still have the blue flowered hat I wore. Good times.
Have fun at Camp Shakerag!
“dig” a latrine! And s’mores of course…
Chewy/crunchy & warm freshly baked bread with local honey. Best breakfast!
My favorite camp memory is fishing for perch after supper. We cleaned them after dark and ate them fried in butter and breadcrumbs in the morning.
Anything that was in or on the water – swimming, sailing, canoeing, rowing.
Went to a knitting retreat with Cat Bordhi on Friday harbor where I met Pam who lives in North Carolina and I’m a Californian. Since then we have travelled to the Shetlands together and keep our long distance friendship very alive. Best gift ever.
Campfires and roasted marshmallows are my favorite camp experience. Have fun at retreat. Most of the women in my bookgroup knit and a couple times a year we leave the husbands behind for a day or even weekend of knitting.Pure soul food!
Sadly, I have no favorite camp memories. I only went to “sleep-over” camp once, the first summer after my mother died. I’m pretty sure my attitude had something to do with my less-than-stellar time. Since then, I have been on a quilting retreat and a knitting retreat – and had a blast both times! Amazing what half a century and a positive attitude can do! Still, I’d love to win. Who wouldn’t? Thanks for the chance.
Campfires and outdoor overnights. Making a copper picture of the lodge.
My favorite camp memory is of the week my sister went to camp! Just by coincidence a couple of fun things happened for the rest of the family that week and to this day (we’re in our 50’s) she gets mad when we talk about that week, since she just hates to miss out on anything. Of course over the years we have fully embellished those events to keep the fun alive!
My cousin & besties do a knitting retreat each year, with a couple off for new babies, etc. We have a great time catching up, spending time together & learning some knitting techniques. The last couple of year years, we’ve done the Webs retreat. We’re scheduled to go again in October. Can’t wait!
The stars, it has to be the stars in the night time sky.
Loved to go rock hunting at Girl Scouts camp many moons ago. Still love rocks. Would love to go to a knitting camp ~ bet it would be so awesome!
Dreaming of knit camp! My LYS hosts one in September and I’m gonna get there soon!
Playing Rover Red Rover (come over). Have a great retreat!
Camping in the Colorado mountains and inner tubing in the fast moving creeks and fishing with my dad.
The smell of the pines and vibrant greens of the moss.
I got my first real kiss at camp, and quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. I hope I’ve improved since then.
I never went to camp when I was a kid! But I did got to stitches for several years while they were in Georgia!!!
I would love to make that top out of the Sylph but it is out of my price range right now. I need to win this.
I once went to 4-H camp for a couple of days when I was about 12 or 13. All I remember is making a terrarium that was fatally rearranged during the transport home, and that my hair flipped up fetchingly after air-drying without any effort from me. That last was a revelation that was rarely repeated in the many, many years since.
Stories around the campfire is still my favorite part of any type of camp!
aaa
My favorite activity at day camp was making friendship bracelets and lanyard keychains. (I didn’t even have keys! Why was I so jazzed about keychains?)
My favorite part of camping, whether it is away at camp or just camping are the evening campfires. No cellphones or tv, everyone sitting together talking and enjoying each other’s company.
There’s nothing like the primal love of being around a fire sharing the heat, and the magic of the flame. The feeling of being in nature is just as great as creating something from natural fibers from an animal to wear.
Sneaking out at night to sleep on the beach (it got very cold!).
My first camp memory is yet to come !
Camping as a child. Our whole family spent lots of time each summer in a tent, sometimes at our local state park and other times traveling.
Setting marshmallows afire until they were little black balls with gooey insides.
I went to camp once as a kid. I loved the swimming part, hated the rest.
I’m an Army brat and lived in Hawaii for 5-6th grade where part of the 6th grade curriculum was a 3 day outdoor education excursion to a rustic camp between the mountains and the sea. I still remember waking up before my (noisy, giggly!!) cabin mates and standing on the beach with the warm surf rushing up around my ankles while listening to the birds chatting in the trees and the muffled clanking of pots and pans in the mess hall kitchen and breathing the early morning scents of salty ocean, a million flowers and frying bacon. I need some ocean!
Making s’mores at Girl Scout camp and then becoming a GS leader and taking our troop on a camping weekend.
Camp Gailor-Maxon in the 1960s was my only camp experience. Unless you want to count the incredible week at the Shakerag craft workshop I took last summer. I’m sorry to miss the knitting weekend, but I’m at Shakerag the second week of workshops (improving my sewing abilities, can’t wait!) and the knit-fest is before the first week. I know it’s cooler on the mountain than in Nashville, and I know everyone is going to have fun!
Telling ghost stories by the campfire with a sky full of stars overhead.
Though I never had the opportunity to go to an actual camp as a child, I did have camp outs with my two daughters and other single parent friends with their children as an adult. I was thrilled to be able to share these memorable experiences with my children; and, as adults, they are now “paying it forward” with their own children.
S’mores but not while knitting!
Knitting Camp! Every bit of it.
I never went to camp as a child, but my family went camping all over Utah and Colorado. Good memories!
I loved the smells and sounds at camp, so different from my day to day life.
I loved horse camp so much. The quiet in the barn at the end of the day.
Listening to the West River gurgle at night when we camped in Townsend, VT. Even though there were 6 of us squeezed into our camper, sleep was never so peaceful!
sunbathing in a meadow….woke up to find i was in the middle of the eigth fairway!
Never went to a camp, per se, but used to go camping with my family. Love the sound and smell of rain in the forest.
I’d love to attend a knitting camp! What fun you all will have!
When we were in high school, my sister and I attended the Sumner County, Kansas, junior leaders 4-H camp. We piled into our chaperones’ vehicles for the drive to Roman Nose Park in Oklahoma. We tented, cooked our meals, sang around the fire, and—importantly!—spent our days swimming and diving off the rocks. We developed such a deep tan (those were the days of sun tan aids) that we no longer recognized ourselves in the shower room mirror. The very best part, though, was getting to know our fellow junior leaders better outside the usual monthly meeting. We made friends for life. 😉
Brownie Camp, watching all the leaders becoming increasingly sleep-deprived, while we took it in turns to come up with excuses not to go to bed.
Just back from volunteering at a camp for children that have survived burns. These kids are so strong and inspirational. It warms your heart to see the bonds that they are creating that will only help them in their life!
I’d love to attend a knitting retreat, and this location is lovely!
The year i was a camp counselor and we had the young Girl Scouts convinced that chocolate milk came from brown cows.
Wow! Thank you, Jane Saffir – a generous gift!! I went to only one camp as a teen – by a lake and the rest of the memory is a blur 🙂 🙂 One with MDK would stay in my mind, I’m sure!!
As a girl I went to a GA (Girls in Action) camp sponsored by the Baptist Church. I think my favorite memories are of all the songs we learned (which are now forgotten). I think I would love to attend a knitting camp someday.
S’mores!
Singing silly songs around a campfire. Just sitting around with other knitters and asking what that wonderful shawl/sweater/scarf/thing is that you are wearing. 🙂
Girl Scout camp c. 1973: feet up on a log close to the fire, look at my sneakers and think, oh no, someone’s marshmallow fell on my foot, only to realize it was a melted blob of my own sneaker!
Bugs, sun, snakes? No camping for me! But I love it when my husband and son go and I get a day or two of alone time!
Meg Swansen’s Knitting Camp 2010. I love everything Wisconsin. Camping in a hotel room is my kind of camping, but if there’s a next time, I would do it without a roommate. Long story.
Favorite thing about summer camp as a kid was the freedom from one on one adult supervision. Hanging with the pack.
I really don’t have any fond memories of camp, so let’s go with my favorite knitting retreat memory (close enough, right?): presenting my Celestarium at the retreat fashion show, and the gasp of delight from the entire room when my friend in the crowd pointed out that the beads were glow-in-the-dark. 🙂
The scent of pine when opening the tent flap in the morning.
my favorite camp memory: waking up in the early morning silence of the woods….ahhhhhh
swimming everyday in the lake.
Not much of a camper but I have enjoyed our church retreats at Beersheba Springs.
Favorite camp memory: unlimited quantities of the sweetest silver queen corn on the cob in the world!
Best part about “camp” was being in new surroundings. Camp looked and felt so different than home in the city! I absolutely LOVED the feel of nature.
Creating lifelong friendships and memories.
My favorite camping memories were at band camp. It was hot, hard work. Yet it really brought our band together as a group and a community. Good times!
Have a wonderful time meeting new friends and being inspired by creative people.
My favorite part of camp was always the campfires. The smell of the fire, the shadows, and the singing with just a a guitar. It always seemed magical.
It’s VERY HARD to pick my favorite camp memory, because I loved camp like CRAZY. But, it might be the first time I hiked up a mountain. It was a dawn hike on the third morning at a brand new camp. I could barely make it to the top, the camp director had me hold onto his fanny pack the whole second half of the hike, and it was a TINY mountain. (Around 2,000 ft?) But I LOVED it. And, at the end of the summer, I went on a five day back packing trip in New Hampshire’s Presidential Mountains. I was really proud of that, but looking back, that first hike really changed my life.
The camraderie sitting by the fire, knowing the universe was bigger than just us.
I’ve never been camping! But I’m up for anything knitting. Enjoy the retreat!
6th grade sleep away camp….waking up before the other girls and hearing the early morning sounds of nature….very peaceful
Skinny dipping and skunk at the tent door!! Oh my!
1969, Girl Scout camp. I was 9. We stayed in wood-platform, tented cabins. But one night, we camped out in pup tents – 2 to a tent. Mary (name changed to protect … oh never mind, I can’t remember her name), shared my tent with me. She was 1/2 of a set of twins. Our tent was on a slight hill. Mary woke me up in the middle of the night to come with her to the bathroom. She was nervous about the route in the dark. She stood in the entrance to the tent, potty-dancing and imploring me to hurry, hurry, hurry. I struggled to get into my shoes. She finally let loose, peeing on the floor of the tent. The slight angle of the ground caused all the pee to roll downhill onto MY SLEEPING BAG! I spent the rest of the night huddled in the upper (dry) reaches of my sleeping bag, trying to sleep in the damp odor of pee.
Catching crayfish in the lake for the evening crayfish boil and pulling the blanket over my head at night when the bats were active in our cabin are two things I remember most clearly. Although, there was the night we woke up the counselors and made them hike with us around the lake. They were all pooped the next day while we were still full of energy. Oh, to be young again.
Evening walks through the sand dunes to see the sun set over the lake. The colours of the sky were miraculous and always left me in awe….still do.
I’ve never been to a camp, but I’ve been camping with my parents as a kid. My favorite memory is that was the only time my mom would buy those little individual boxes of cereal that came in a variety pack — especially because it had all the sugary cereals she wouldn’t normally buy.
Heading to the South Shore of Lake Superior to Madeline Island with a group of women friends, for about 15-20 years, I have lost count! A long weekend spent cooking fabulous foods, skinny dipping in the really cold lake, sitting by the campfire laughing, hiking in the beautiful state and county parks on the island, and having cocktails at Tom’s Burned Down Bar!!!!!! That’s my adult camp memory. I spent many years as a kid at Concordia Language Village Swedish camp with dear friends. Dancing around the maypole, learning to speak Swedish, much laughter and making incredible memories!
Hearing the birds in the early morning before the sun comes up
For about the last four years I’ve been hosting my knitting group at the remote family cabin. Every time has been a pure joy!
My favorite camp memory? Hmm…I went to Girl Scout Day Camp a gazillion years ago. We always had a tie-dye day, where we actually tie-dyed EVERYTHING. 🙂
I never went to camp, but I do love cashmere and linen!
Going to camp for two weeks was a magical time. Growing up in a big city and at times a not so happy home, camp was a wonderful time to just be a kid and play, swim, sing, and make al sorts of craft projects.
Meeting Robin; she became my best friend until high school and drifted apart.
As the only girl in a family of males, I found camp a bewildering introduction to girl culture. Passing notes, on-again-off-again friendships, weird competitiveness mixed with closeness. At the time, I said I loved it and I begged my parents to extend my 4-week commitment to 8, which they did. (The other girl from my home town went home early due to homesickness.) The best part of camp was definitely swimming in the lake, which is something I would have done with my cousins in August if I hadn’t stayed at Camp Birchwood. How ignorant tween girls are of their real feelings!
Probably the most memorable bit of camp, though, was that Elvis died while I was there. They made an announcement over the loudspeaker and the kids didn’t understand why it was a big deal.
Campfires, with or without s’mores.
My family were never campers, so summer camp was my first time sleeping in a sleeping bag NOT on the family room floor. We slept in cabins and on bunks; I remember thinking it was just like Little House in the Big Woods.
I never went to Camp as a kid. I think my idea of a perfect Camp is one that Brody could go with me!
When I was 6 I went to Colorado Mountain Camps and learned how to ride a horse. As a little girl who liked to pretend I was a princess, this was a Formative Moment. My brothers made fun of me but I was too busy waving to my devoted subjects to care.
One year I went to Girl Scout Camp, and since it was the seventies there was no water to drink, only orange drink from a giant yellow plastic barrel donated by McDonalds. At the time I thought it was the best thing ever!
I’ll always remember the taste of the pancakes we cooked on a “hobo” stove we made from a large tin can. Best pancakes ever!
I really loved going to Camp Ruby Lake with the Girl Scouts. The tip test to make sure you could properly swamp a canoe was the best!
I always went to Camp Mosey Wood (Girl Scout camp) in the Poconos as a kid, and the night before camp sessions would end, we would have a farewell ceremony. Each camper would launch a wooden disk (sawed from downed trees) with a little candle on it out onto the lake and then we all sang songs and did skits and so on. It was an art/craft project to decorate your candle float- though at a bare minimum you had to put your name and group on it. The lake was always so beautiful with the little candles floating all over by the time night had fallen and we always finished by singing the camp song and then Taps.
It was always a lovely end to a great 2 weeks at camp!
My favorite memory of camp has to be sitting around the campfire in the evenings making and eating smores! Yum!!
Despite my mom’s fears about my hay fever, I loved working in the barn around the animals at summer camp. Now I have my very own barn! And a small herd of fiber bearing sheep and goats!
Every year since 2001 I have gone to The Clearing, a folk school outside of Ellison Bay, WI, for a week long writing workshop/retreat. We stay in log and stone cabins perched on a bluff overlooking the bay of Green Bay and the sunset, have 3 family-style meals a day (with fresh homemade bread at every meal–be still my heart), spend half of the day in class workshopping our writing and the other half in Quiet Writing Time where the writers work on their individual projects. The school is on 128 acres of woods and fields crisscrossed by paths, a stargazing circle, stone council rings for nighttime fires,and a labyrinth made of native stone. Sorry for the extended commercial but I’m not able to go this year so dredging up the memories for you has been exquisite torture. I’m sure when my life swings back to what passes for normal I’ll get to go again, until then I’ll dream of being there. Wish I was there with you at Shakerag. Enjoy–and have a slice of warm bread with butter for me, will you?
So many fun memories of camp after getting over homesickness. Meeting new friends, trying new things, falling into the bunk bed at night in absolute exhaustion… I loved camp!
Horseback riding-couldn’t get enough
Sitting around the fire telling stories
My version of camp was junior science academy (run by the local natural history museum). Lots of whacking on rocks for fossil finding!
I was a counselor at a camp in PA for a season. The late night, porch watching, cold sandwich eating times were divine. And I saw fireflies for the first time!
The scary stories we told at Girl Scout camp … so no one would dare go to the latrine during the night!
Ahhhhh……camp memories. Such good times — hearing silence for the first time, crunching pine needles underfoot, watching huge trees sway in the breeze and racing to the river to plunge hot, sweaty little bodies into the luscious cold, clear water. Oh, to be a kid again!
Favorite camp memory- The crazy horrible food. I remember one year there was gravy three meals per day (it was Oklahoma after all) and another where the vegetarian option was some thick gluey substance that would hold on to the plate when tilted so the plate was vertical. Scary stuff! lol. But we all had a good time and no one starved.
My favorite camp memory is learning to identify the different conifers by their bark texture, and later being awarded “camp naturalist” because I was vociferous in my identification of other plants and animals too.
I didn’t get to go to camp as a kid but I still hope to make it to an adult version one of these days! 🙂
Fishing for bluegills in my and my grandpa’s no-so-secret “secret” fishing spot
My favorite camp moment was riding horses at girl scout camp.
My favorite camp memory is when I went to horse camp and had my very own horse for an entire week. His name was Jigger and he was so sweet.
Never been to camp.
Favorite camp memory: campfire songs and stories; laughing with friends so loud and so late into the night that the other campers got a little cranky (sorry/ not sorry); smores.
Singing songs around the evening campfire was my favorite!
My favorite part of camp is any type of craft activity!
Growing up in Wyoming, I went to a 3-day 4-H camp every summer. Enjoyed crafts and square dancing. I now live in Maine on a lake, across from a camp for underpriveldge kids. It’s enjoyable to hear all the laughter and watch the canoe races.
I went to church camp a few times when I was in Elementary School in the early 1970’s. What I remember most fondly is learning how to wood-burn using a magnifying glass and burning my name into a wooden necklace (which I found recently and still love)! Have fun this weekend – I wish I could be there!
Last day comment from some one (not me- honest) while waiting in the breakfast line “I wonder which wine goes with pancakes? Red or white?”
Girl Scout camp one summer. Didn’t want to be left there on day 1 and didn’t want to go home on day 14!
I never went to camp. The closest I get is going to Stitches West each year with friends and having a raucously good time.
Do through-hiking memories count as camping memories? I loved having my little light lace weight knitting project in my waistpack…when I felt like resting, I’d sit on a sunny rock and knit for a bit, and then walk some more….I’ll do some transparency knitting on this summer’s hike!
My most enduring memory of Girl Scout camp at Camp Windigo in Wild Rose, WI is not my favorite one. We went on an overnight bike hike, lashing sleeping bags and gear to bikes, riding away from the camp, and then sleeping out under the stars. I remember being pretty scared of all of the outdoor sounds and for the first time in my young life realizing how important shelter was to me.
Honestly, my favorite is when another girl came into our cabin during our afternoon free time and was staggered to see me lying on my bunk reading a book. “Don’t you want to come hang out with us?” No. No, I don’t. I’ve hung out with you all morning and will hang out with you all evening. There’s so much hanging out. Don’t you want to read a book quietly, too?
My family would go camping, and before we’d leave, I’d go to the library and get a stack of books – as many as they’d let me check out. I’d spend the weekend reading – heaven!
Favorite camp memory: s’mores! And trying real hard to toast the marshmallow without setting it on fire.
Oh, I always wanted to go to a camp but never was able to! But my family went camping in the Rockies and various national parks throughout western USA during my childhood. Does that count?
Different camps have given me so many great memories! What threads through time and camps is making new and renewing old friendships, time in nature, and campfires.
I’ve never been to a knitting camp but I did camp as a kid. Loved cooking over a fire!
I brought my 6th grade class to a week long camp for many years. Oh . . . good times!
Only camp experience was a week long leadership trip in HS and I was sorry I missed all those years of camp when younger.
Camping by a small stream with my parents and my three small children. We were up in the colorado mountains, mid summer. It was a magical place, though later we found out that we couldn’t camp there which explains why we were by ourselves. It was a perfect day and place.
My favorite memory is from Camp Fire Girl camp on Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho. The rustic cabins were tucked in the woods; waking up with that chilly, dewy air, and it smells so fresh!
I have not had the opportunity to go to a knitting camp but if they are anything like quilting camp I am sooo game to go!!!!!
When I was a kid, I attended a day camp focused on music and arts, held on one of the college campuses. We had opportunities to swim, play sports, and do crafts in addition to making music, dancing, and having fun with drama. But what I remember most was in the mornings, when everyone assembled in one of the big halls for any announcements followed by a brief performance from one of the instructors. I don’t recall much about many of the performances (other than when the classical guitarist’s footrest collapsed with a SNAP! mid-piece), but my camp friends and I would spend the time between when we arrived and when Assembly began with our decks of cards, playing endless games of Bullsh!t. There would sometimes be enough of us that we’d need to use two decks of cards, and at lunchtime we’d meet up, eat quickly, and play some more.
Sleeping in bunk beds and telling ghost stories in the dark!
I’ve never been to camp, but a knitting camp sounds wonderful!
Sailing camp sunburn!
I’ve been watching the “road to Sewanee” on Instagram — what fun! I have no camp memories, however. That was one of the things not in the budget when I was a kid. I do have nice memories of Camp Front Porch — especially sitting with my stack of library books under the covered part when it rained.
Lying on my cot in the Sierras at the age of 8 in a contest to see who could count the most stars – I’m sure the counselors mostly meant us to be quiet so we’d go to sleep, but I stayed awake much later so I’d have the most. Don’t remember who won but I loved it!
…And a whole bunch more things I haven’t thought of in decades! Thanks so much for the question that triggered these memories…
My favorite camp memory was when I was a camp counselor at a daily camp for special needs children. The child I was assigned was Down’s Syndrome child named Danny. He was a ball of fire and when he saw me each morning he would holler Shee A at the top of his lungs and run and jump into my arms.
Walking ou beautiul dog on the beach at Asilomar Conference Center. Bliss, and perfect sweater weather.
Sixth grade conservation camp in San Diego. We planted lots of trees and cleaned up an area. Great fun and great memories!
Purcell Jones, director of Camp Morehead, would down an entire (glass) bottle of Pepsi while calling evening bingo games, to be followed shortly by an extremely loud and long burp!
OMG, I am flooded with memories of Camp Mudjekeewis in western Maine, where I went for the WHOLE SUMMER (8 weeks) from ages 9-14. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life, especially being in a community of only women/girls. Water sports, hiking up Mount Washington (no small feat), classical music twice a week, dip in the early mornings (COLD!), cherry cobbler and other great foods, float night, rowing in the ancient crew shell, singing — always singing. I loved every minute of it, and spent the winters longing to be back at camp again.
We camp in a seaside RV park every year, which means tenting, but with electricity. I love making waffles at the beach!
Not sure if this counts as a favorite memory, but I remember in 5th grade science camp we only had 5 minute showers. I was so panicked about the time limit (I had never timed myself before) I applied shampoo, dropped the shampoo bottle, didn’t rinse the it from my hair, and ducked out of the shower in less than a minute. I didn’t shower again that week. Haha.
When I was a child, we always went to Church camp the week before midsummer. Before midnight on midsummer eve we climbed a mountain to see the sun slip below the horizon just a moment before it rose again. I lived in Lapland then, just south of the Polar circle. The mosquitoes, the tent where we had our gatherings, the volunteer ladies who took care of all the cooking, the smell of grass and the probably toxic insect spray, the energetic singing, the inspired preachers, it was a weird and wonderful place…
Our son’s first job was as a camp counselor. It was hard, rewarding work and we were so proud of him.
Girl Scout camp the summer I was 10. We pulled the mattresses off our cots and took them outside so we could lay down and watch the Perseid meteor shower.
My favorite camp memory is sitting on the beach in the late afternoon, drying my hair and enjoying the sunset.
Never been to the camps for knitting.
riding horses at girl scout camp under the old growth trees, campfires, singing, sugary cereal I never got at home.
Meg Swansen’s knitting camp about 15 years ago – I went alone and met two women who have become two very close friends in knitting and the rest of life.
My fave camp memory is really too long, even for me! The short version, my bunk raised the boys. Everyone got caught but a friend & I. We laid in the tall grass across from the counselors campfire, not knowing how to surrender. For, I guess a long time. (I was friends with the dog who tried to turn is in, so I was able to quiet him down). Eventually we just walked in & were in B I G trouble.
I went to church camps and girl scout camps as a kid. My best memories are of cooking together, singing raunchy songs, and scary stories told around the campfire. I always loved being at camp.
465 peopke before me!!!! Oh well…we did a 24 hour solo in the woods and despite being SURE bears would eat me, I loved it
I do virtual knitting camp every summer with the Loopy Ewe. I love the friends and the projects I’ve made over the years.
I remember weaving at a sleep-away camp; the teacher started each project with a few rows using toilet paper!
I never went to summer camp, but I did go to a pre-college program at Vanderbilt the summer before my senior year of high school. It was 6 weeks away from home, in a college dorm, doing college level engineering work and I loved it. The weekends were full of fun field trip activities and my favorite was when we took a lazy float down the Harpeth river. I remembered to use my sunscreen, but forgot to slather it on my chest and managed a pretty nasty sunburn. Sunburn notwithstanding, I really enjoyed that summer.
Watching mice crawl up the mesh screening of the tents at Girl Scout camp in Michigan around 1959.
Making s’mores, situpons and new friends. Wanting to be a “white cap” – the very best and strongest swimmers; I was a “blue cap” – the middle group, however I got great motivation to work harder.
As a counsellor in about 1971, my most stressful moments were forbidding 11 year old girls from smoking cigarettes (in very western Connecticut, close to NY border). I wasn’t a smoker and I don’t know where the cigarettes came from, but there was no smoking in my tent!!!
Thanks for asking, and for the giveaway.
I went to church camp for many years as a child and as a leader.,What I loved most was the singing- on the bus, around the campfire, everywhere. We sang hymns and silly songs and popular songs. I sing many of those songs with my grandkids now.,
At Campfire Girls Camp I won a pig calling contest by standing up by the campfire and yelling “soueee,” over and over. I’ve never forgotten the thrill.
I did go to music camp as a teenager! Didn’t really like it though. 😀 My favorite part was the craft cabin!
I’ve only been to camp once as a teen. The memory that has lasted was building a fire pit to cook chicken. I couldn’t wrap my head around how something would cook being buried. Also, being the child of city folk, this was my first experience with hiking, and sleeping in a tent.
I was a camp counselor for 5 years at a summer, outdoor, day camp for kids age 5-12. Every week was a different theme such as Pirate, Olympics etc. The other night at dinner my 35 year old son mentioned how often he shares his memories of the camp with his fiancé. It was so awesome how this camp experience had such an impact on his childhood!
Thinking of camping today could make me cry… Because I can’t go this minute, to the coast, smelling the sea, listening to rustling pines, swimming…
My husband and I took our kids to Cherokee mountain for their first time camping out..it was mid week and we need to get laundry done..we went down out of the mountain to do laundry ..when we returned a storm had hit we had no idea..our tent was completely laying on the ground and all our clean clothes and all the contents inside our tent waa totally messed up..we enjoyed every bit of it. Teaching our kids how to enjoy life even through the storms.
I attended Campfire girl camp in Frontenac, Minnesota on the mighty Mississippi River. I enjoyed singing in the evening and those songs are still taking up enjoyable space in my brain’s hard drive.
At a local group’s annual weekend getaway, the best part was the after dinner jello shots.
I’ve never been to a retreat but hope to one day! Don’t have an LYS either… Would love to make some memories at some point!
Canoeing! Which would probably be even more awesome with knitting….
Campfires and S’mores, of course!
My favorite camp memory was Girl Scout camp. It was pitch black, we were all in our cabin, shining our flashlights outside and suddenly saw 2 yellow eyes! We all screamed and then figured out it was a raccoon. Poor raccoon, he must have been terrified! It was great fun!!
Years ago my girlfriend and I took our daughters for an overnight camping trip near our home in Northern California. With our car laden with gear we struck out at many campsites before finding a spot on the side of a hill on the California coast about 100 miles from our home. We were totally inept at setting up a tent and it listed far to the right and collapsed on the left. We did however prove to be quite handy at polishing off a bottle of wine and laughing ourselves silly. If only we knew how to knit then…
I’ve never been camping, not even in the back yard. But for some reason I had a sleeping bag??? I’ll have to ask Mom about that one. Thanks for the giveaway. KittenWhiplash on Ravelry.
I haven’t been able to attend a formal knitting camp (oh do I wish I could!), but I have very happy memories of knitting while camping with my bff, sitting around the campfire with headlamps on our heads to knit late into the night while the fire burned down. Everybody else would be nestled in the tents, asleep, and she and I would sit up, listening to the fire crackle, drinking tea, telling stores (watching the raccoons steal our snacks from the other side of the picnic table), knitting away. Headlamps are great for knitting at night :-). Didn’t hurt that there was a yarn store a few miles from the campsite!
Ooh! Your retreat sounds like so much fun! My favourite memory of a girl at camp was the campfires at night, performing and watching skits, and singing songs, listening to the beautiful harmonies only a hundred girls and women can make, and watching the summer sun set. It remains one of my most favourite moments in life.
In northern California where I grew up, we didn’t go away to sleepover camp. But Camp Fire Girls offered a day camp where we hiked and learned about the flora and fauna. I especially remember the ferns with pollen on the backs. When you pressed it against your hand or arm, it left the imprint of the fern leaf. Oh, and making s’mores of course!
Girl Scout Camp in Jr. High and High school starring into the camp fire all night long……. And planning our adult lives…… Oh for life to be that simple again.
As a kid, my parents never sent us to camp. But as an adult, I sign up for all retreats that I can! Recently went on one with my quilters guild and we had a fabulous afternoon of getting lost in the suburbs of Milwaukee (stopped at 2 quilts stores along the way).
Very fuzzy memory of getting poison ivy – can’t remember much else.
Ahh, the Chipmunk Incident comes to mind. More than 20 years ago, my husband and I arrived at a cabin at Chataway Lakes Resort in BC’s Interior with our two young children, ready to share with them our love of fishing and the great outdoors. I was standing at the picnic table near the lakefront taking in the view with the kids and my husband went to open the door to the cabin to put away our things. Hearing a screeching-squealing sound, I turned to see a tiny chipmunk running at full speed straight for me. When it was about three feet away, it launched itself, still squealing, at my head. I ducked, too late, and it flew off my head, landed in some tall grasses and ran away into the forest. The kids were doubled over laughing. It took about half an hour for my heart rate to recover. To this day, I won’t/can’t go into a cabin until it has been checked for demon chipmunks. Nature schmature. 😉
Sit upons
I did not believe the camp counselors who said we couldn’t have ANY food in our cabins, and brought a candy bar back from the canteen. In the middle of the night, 10 million ants descended on our cabin for that candy bar! Needless to say, chaos ensued, and my lesson was learned. I am quite sure, however, that MANY candy bars (of the chocolate variety) will be enjoyed at your Shakerag Workshop. Enjoy!
My favorite camping moment was finding out our cabin had indoor plumbing! Not all of them did.
One summer I was lucky enough to attend knitting camp with Meg Swanson. It was wonderful and so inspiring. Hey, I need to do that again!
I loved being in the woods and walking among the trees when I went to camp as a child.
Dozing off by the fire at my coven’s spring retreat, hosted at a beautiful Quaker center in the Santa Cruz mountains, as the festivities continued on late into the night. <3
I only went to vacation bible school in the summer as a kid, and PSAL day camps in our local NYC public school. But.. as a family we went camping. My favorite memory is of my dad stripping saplings to replace the tent poles we forgot at home. It was an ingenious late night substitute along the St Lawrence river, but it rained half the week and our tent sank and sank, with my intrepid parents… 5 kids, including a toddler, a 6 month old, my rotten brothers and poor me, alone in my misery with a flashlight and Louisa May Alcott.
No parents around to tell me what to do!! The freedom to explore and experience all of camp life!
Roasting marshmallows by the fire.
Watching the principal and 5th grade math teacher tip their canoe after giving us a lecture reminding us of canoe safety. Oh, Camp Livingston…also, the first place this midwestern girl ever had a bagel. Hey, the 80s were a strange time.
S’mores, of course!!
Camp was a mixed bag – on the one hand getting away from family to enjoy a new experience and on the other not being very good at making friends and feeling lonely.
My best memories of camp are from my childhood. Going to summer camp for a week in the summer and camping in tents with about 20 other kids, Bonfires and swimming, hikes and singing were the days of summer camp for me.
A few years ago at Girl Guide camp, I – the leader – decided to “hide” the coffee grounds in my tent, because, hey, it’s not really FOOD. We came back from an afternoon walk to find my tent shredded, covered in black stuff and one very strung out chipmunk vibrating in the corner. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen, and I took a LOT of ribbing for it. Needless to say, anything edible gets locked up in the car these days!
Enjoy the retreat!
I never got to go to camp. Winning yarn would be a grand consolation prize for never getting to go!
Camping with my parents and 4 sisters in the 1960’s…
Camp memory…..the northern lights!
I grew up going to sleep away camp, did not knit anything in those months but I did give away a sweater I had knitted and took to camp. One of my camp mates really like the sweater witha bateua neck and long sleeves. I will always associate that with with the recipient. ( I knitted the swater during my High School years, most probably when I was 16).
I have yet to manage a knitting camp getaway!
Quilt camp with 400 other insane quilters. A week of bliss. However, knitting has taken over the quilting now. Love the Field Guides. Thanks for all the inspiration!
I hated camp as a kid! Lean-to’s and wood outhouses, ugh. But I think knitting camp might be right up my alley, as long as there is indoor plumbing!
One of my favorite memories from camp is learning how to do complex braids with plastic lacing. I don’t remember actually making the braids into lanyards or anything else, but just the enjoyment of making the multicolor braids. Which totally makes sense given that I’m a process knitter rather than a project knitter!
CYO Day Camp in Queens NY, mid 1960’s. Making lanyards, drinking ‘bug juice’ and silly songs! Thanks for the giveaway.
SMORES by the campfire
I went to camp only a few times as a child & just lived it!! The campfire, cooking over the fire, sleeping in either a dusty cabin or a leaking tent!! It was great fun! Now I camp as an adult & love it!! I would like to go to a knitting camp for a while!! That sounds relaxing & fun!!
I do love the camp fires at camp
My favorite camp memory is from my first Girl Scout backpacking trip. The first night there was an amazing thunderstorm where we ended up getting completely soaked resulting in returning to the Girl Scout camp in the morning to get dried out.
I’ve never been much of a camper, but I always love roasting marshmallows around a fire. In fact, the fire is the best part of any outdoor get-together!
Lying in the tent at night with my sweet husband and 4 year old daughter when she first heard an owl in the top of a nearby tree… “Who cooks for you??” he hooted… Her little face of amazement and joy were absolutely priceless.
Travelling every summer with my parents and siblings to every new national park in my country of origin: Costa Rica. Unforgettable!
Swimming for what seemed to feel like a full day!
I would be so thrilled to be able to attend a knitting retreat and be joined by my good friend and knitting buddy from Providence, RI who I hardly ever get to see!
I truly enjoyed camp, even the homesick tent mates. But my best memory was at the end when my parents came to get me so early it was still dark, so we could be home in time to go to the Fourth of July parade which was a huge event (2 hours!) in my hometown. Somehow, even at 9 or 10, I understood that was a thing only parents would do because they loved you and didn’t want you to be sad you missed it.
Oh woman, or oh man, my only camp memory is kind of humiliating. I was 11 and very much a ‘know it all ‘ kind of kid. On the final night of our week at camp we had the big bonfire and award ceremony. I was so honored to win the CHIEF MOW MOW AWARD FOR COURAGE but internally I thought ; there must be a mistake! Moments later I learned winning this award meant I was to sleep in the big teepee by the lake all by myself !
Not knowing there was no bedding in said teepee, or that I could say I’m really just full of hot air and have no courage whatsoever, I slunk into the dark, mosquito filled teepee, rearranged a few rocks and laid on my bed of black dirt and spent the night wondering how I got so lucky?
So there you have it. Now I wonder why I didnt just go sleep in my bunk. Many years passed and I took my own two sons camping, many times. I told them scary stories, we got scared by squirrels, scared by skunks and even a bear. Camping is always memorable, not always fun.
I went to camp for classical musicians and my favorite memories are of becoming friends with other kids who were also devoting all their time to music, and hearing their brilliant & moving performances at our concert series that was called WIPs! (knitting connection FTW!)
Best camp memory? Non-stop lake swimming, jumping off the dock, drying out in the sun, and repeating the process.
My West Coast family were camping in the Shenandoah Mtns. It started to rain so we picked up our sleeping bags and headed to station wagon. All night long we listened to thunder and lightning while it poured. In the morning we opened door to find it had rained baby frogs all over the place. Ha
Singing around the campfire.
favorite camp memory? definitely havdallah. saying goodbye to shabbat every week with candles and song.
I remember being on a camping trip with our Church when I was a child I had just been given my hotdog in a bun with loads of ketchup and was sitting down next to my best friend on a log. Unfortunately I over balanced fell backwards and my friend received the hotdog with all the trimmings square in the face. We laughed so much I nearly threw up!
Finally, learning to post on a horse, and the ocean at Santa Cruz, California.
As a young girl in Girl Scouts my fondest memory was exploring nature with the flora and natural streams. I became a Girl Scouts Leader 40 years ago and loved teaching my young scouts crafts including knitting, embroidery, and beadwork. I learned knitting about 60 years ago and left the craft for several years, but I am now back with full force and loving every minute of it
My favorite camp memory is probably my wet hair freezing after a shower, as my fellow 6th graders and I walked back to our cabin from the bathroom!
So far, I have either signed too late, had to use the money for something else, or work gets in the way to attend a camp. I have so many on my bucket list. I am trying, but it’s said – try harder! I’ll get there one way or the other!
Favorite camp memory: arts and crafts!
I’ve never been to camp, but my favorite camping memory from growing up was learning how to fish. And beating my brother at cards. That never got old.
Singing camp songs on the bus rides, making s’mores and foil dinners over a campfire, and stargazing!
I have no favorite camp memories, I’m allergic to everything and I would get stung and swell up! 🙂 But I love spending the day camped out on my sofa knitting, with a cool drink, air conditioning, and great music or TV.
I have gone to Girl Scout camps each summer when younger and have always loved the smell of the campfire. My husband and I go camping twice a year. He falls asleep by the campfire and I sit and knit by the campfire. My two favorite memories!
I remember that time at Camp Arawak when my cousin and I were having such a great time, until Billy got killed by a swarm of bees and the cook got scalded to death by a pot of boilig water and people kept dying and then my cousin Angela was really a BOY.
Or maybe that was a movie.
I’ve never been to camp.
No camp memories for me…but every year my friends and I laugh at our husbands when they go on their annual camping weekend in November…silly boys sleeping outside while we are snug and warm at home!
Camp memory…has to be making what they called God’s Eyes, wrapping colored string/threads around popsicle sticks! I was enamored of the variety of colors. I seem to remember making tons of them that summer long after camp ended. This summer, I plan to teach my granddaughters how to make one!!
Ok, Ripley’s Believe it or not….or…telling tales out of camp. I went to Meg Swansen’s Knit Camp and she was saying how much she hated to do swatches. her solution? She and Joyce Williams traded and did each other’s swatches!! Ponder that for a minute! best, Mary in Cincinnati
Memory from camp – swimming in a really cold lake!
Craft time !
Acoustic guitar music and singalongs under the redwoods.
Taking my 6th graders to camp. My fave – horseback riding!
Thanks for the great giveaway.
Wish I could be there!!
I never went away to camp as a kid, but I love going camping. Does that count? Sitting around the campfire with friends and family, sharing stories is about my favorite thing.
The waterfront and canoes! So cool! I loved the crafts, too. My sit- upon lasted for years!!!
Accidentally “branding” the middle of my forehead with a flaming marshmallow when trying to blow it out. How did I not catch my hair on fire???
My most prominent camp memory was at GS day camp in Florida when I saw actual bamboo for the first time. I was fascinated. And 9 years old….so.
The foil packet meals we used to cook in the camp fire –they always tasted better outdoors!
There were too many kids in my family for my parents to be able to send us to camp. Instead, they set up a big tent in the backyard where we could have sleep-overs with friends — far enough away to feel like an adventure, close enough to go back inside when the mosquitoes got in the tent, or it started to rain (or the scary stories were a little too believable in the pitch-dark). Also, roasting s’mores with my 13-year-old BFF over the embers in the grill after supper.
Would tell you but what happens a knitting camp stays at knitting camp, and I would be the last person to tell on Amy Detjen……. just sayin’.
My favorite camping memory is singing all of those goofy songs in the mess hall in the evening and making smores.
O my – I would love to win the Sylph. My favorite camp memory – just getting ideas and learning tips and tricks from other knitters.
I was a camp counselor, and once annually, the local firefighters would bring the firetruck and spray all of us with the firehose. We’d be in swimsuits and sing camp songs in the cold spray.
Sleeping out under the sky with Girl Scouts watching for falling stars
Love knitting,yarn,Tennessee and the “mountain” at Sewanee! Glad to become acquainted with MDK now
I went to camp every summer from age 9 or 10 to 16. I loved camp and and the best time of my life there as home wasn’t too happy. My best memory is when our counselor
had us “runaway.” She went out for the evening and when she returned we were not in our bunks–I believe we were assisted by our CIT. I don’t remember how it really ended but we at age 9 or 10 thought it was the real thing and was a fabulous trick.
Has to be the smell of pine needles and coffee in the morning!
Never went to camp as a kid but my favorite camping memory is falling asleep to the sounds of loons.
Every camp memory is good ! My favorites were going to Sidna Farley’s camp because my two children were little and the freedom took my breath away ! Knitting and laughing without a care in the world. Another wonderful get-away was going from Denver to Putney, VT for a couple of years Having always lived in the West, the East Coast is so very different. Those luxury junkets ended with my marriage. But they were so much fun because those who knit come in all shapes and attitudes.
Singing around the camp fire with friends
The best thing about camp, besides being with friends, was making s’mores.
I’m one of eight kids, six of which were girls.
Every day of my life for 18 years was camp!!!!!!!
When you could burn your leaves on the curb and cook foil wrapped baked potatoes and use sticks to melt marshmallows! Still one of my favorite dinner memories!
Hi Elizabeth Ann, from the large family. This is Elizabeth Ann, from the family of seven, six of whom were girls! And yes, at least while we lived in Florida (near the Cape), it was like camping all the time, because coastal FL was still really wild, and we could do crazy things like you’re describing. Like taking the canoes out to a wooded islet in the Indian River, play chicken to see who got dunked, and get back in time for dad to pick us up w/ the trailer. In the days when parents could drop you off and say get lost, we’ll see you at three!
What o lovely give away!
I avoided Camp, except for day camp, as a kid. But now I love knitting getaways with my knitting friends!
When I was a kid growing up in San Diego, the school system would send elementary students to camp for a week in the back country, Cuyamaca it might have been. On one hike the counselor mentioned yellow bellied sapsuckers. My friend Karen and I found this so hilarious that we looked at each other –
and of course everyone else had stopped talking – and screamed simultaneously “Yellow bellied sapsuckers!!!” We were given the traditional sharp warning.
Summer camp in the Lake District – tents, sunshine, hikes in the rain, wet boots and socks, sore feet, drying rooms, common rooms, climbing, abseiling, building rafts, going round and round in a coracle, first kisses.
I remember the year my sister and I went to girl scout camp together. She sat in my lap during campfire time in the evening. Good sister memories!
Tent camping in the upper peninsula of Michigan and seeing the Northern Lights by the shores of Lake Superior.
hmmm favorite camp memory~ being free of my sisters and brothers for a short time and being able to ride a horse. heaven.
Camping with friends is a very happy memory! Thank you for the giveaway.
I was a high school counselor at a camp for 6th graders. Each side of a cabin had four counselors. The four of us counselors were siting enjoying a moment when all the kids were in bed. The other side of the cabin was quiet and well-behaved, while our side of the cabin had all the wild kids. Just as we were thinking all the kids were finally asleep, suddenly a shriek from our side of the cabin came: “ghost is at the window!” Our side of the cabin erupted in shrieks and suddenly two of our girls bolted past us and into the night. The other counselor and I were several minutes finding the two girls and getting everyone back into bed and quieted. The other side of the cabin never made a noise. Not sure how the other two counselors managed to get all the well-behaved girls of the camp. It certainly showed the wild side we had–but i think we had the kids who were more fun!
Lakeside mimosas on a sunny Texas morning.
Girl Scout horseback riding camp when I was 11. We wore boots the whole time – on the last day i pulled out my sneakers and one was full of baby mice with pink translucent skin! Dumbfounded and riveted at the same time. I still have the faded pictures as proof!
I have never been to camp but didn’t need to since I lived in the country and did everything the kids went to camp for and there were always enough neighborhood kids around to make it fun. I did take my Pinto horse to a local kids camp every year when they did a reenactment of pioneer life in our area and my horse was part of the Indian reservation. So I guess you could say we went to day camp one day per year. (:
My favorite camp memory is at Camp Alleghany, up in the mountains of West Virginia. We were sitting around the campfire singing as we did every Thursday night. We started to sing “Four-leaf Clover” (which I just learned is also a poem by Ella Higginson) and I looked down and found one in the grass right by my hand.
Teaching my little sister “the Little Green Frog” song when I was her camp counselor
I only went to camp once, for 2 weeks, and completely against my will. I was around 12. I’m a city girl through-and-through and do not fare well in the great outdoors. Still, there was at least one memorable moment. Fellow campers and I had been hounding the counselors about their smoking. One morning we woke to see the word HELLO written in cigarette butts outside of our lean-to. We gave up trying to get them to quit smoking after that.
Girl Scout Camp River Ranch – roasting marshmallows!
I never went to camp.
Girl Scout day camp and making and using my sit upon made of oilcloth and stuffed with folded newspapers. Wore that thing out!
camp…………..glassy glassy water early morning. And quiet
My favorite camp memories involve singing around the campfire!
Warm wishes for your retreat and, … sing a little.
There are so many good camp memories listed here! I loved all my camp adventures, singing, sailing, horseback riding, campfires, the flag ceremony, meeting new friends. Then sending my daughter to camp I loved getting those letters she sent home. Most of them barely addressed correctly, but they found me. So sweet. Thanks for bringing back the memories of summer and for the giveaway!
My favorite memory is making s’mores over the campfire. It takes great patience to toast the marshmallow to the perfect brown, slightly crunchy on the outside, all gooey inside. Wait for it, wait for it…..oh no, too long and it bursts into flame.
My favourite camp memory is of my father checking for all 4 children in the middle of the night to see which one of us had fallen out of the tent trailer and was calling for help! (It was my baby brother!)
When I was a little girl, my dad would recite a particularly gruesome poem at the campfire, complete with fatal lighting (flashlight under the chin directed up), grumbled voice, and cackling laugh. We would all wait in excitement, on the edges of our camp stools, and squeal with delighted terror at the very end. I smile to this day thinking of it.
This sure put me in a campy state of mind! I have 9 summers of camp memories that have melted into a blur. But this one is distinct. This was probably 1963 or 64 and I was 14 or 15 on a 7 day canoe trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I was standing on the edge of an island on a large smooth rock that was sloping down toward the lake with our trip counselor, Hop. It was dark and the sky was clear and bright with a full moon, whose reflection was clear on the black still water. Hop said, “I’m going to go there someday.”
As far as I know, he never became an astronaut. On a different subject-at 69 I still wipe my hands on my jeans–even if I don’t have jeans on
Being at Girl Scout camp when I was 11or 12. There were 8 if us in a large tent an it was raining. Our troop leader told us that we were not – under any circumstances – to touch the top of the tent of water would drip in on us. As soon as she left, eight fingers went up and touched the tent. It rained all night and we were pretty soggy by the time the morning rolled around.
We went to a family camp when my children were small, and my daughter wanted to stay with her cousins instead of our cabin. When she was told no, she said, “Well, I will just go back to the godforsaken part of the island,” referring to our cabin which was right next to the chapel. Still a family story after 20 years.
Went to girl Scout camp long time ago. One fellow camper in our cabin was so homesick. I sure felt sorry for her. A knitting camp sounds like great fun.
Favorite camp memory is waiting for dinner at the “singing logs” outside the dining hall at Girl Scout camp!
OK, so I HATED overnight camp, but I admit that I do have very fond memories of sitting around the campfire singing songs–especially “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” I thought that was just for those of us who went to camp in the 70s, but my daughter sings it at her camp too!
Finding out that the kid in the bunk above me wet her bed, AND I was introduced to margarine for the first time. I hated camp!
Best Memory: Craft time at Camp Cuyamaca! Rock Candelabras anyone.
Worst Memory: Camp Fire Girl Scavenger Hunt..someone knifed my pillow in order to secure a feather… BooHoo!
Sure wish I was in Swanee today.
When I was just starting college, I went on a four-day canoe trip with some other incoming freshmen. It was the most camping I’d ever done, and at the end we felt like conquering heroes.
I never went to camp as a child but for the last 30+ years I’ve been attending a Knitting retreat for 5 days. There are at least 100 of us and we sleep in one of the barracks-it feels like camp! So much fun!
Girl scout camp was fun.
I went to camp during what must’ve been a particularly torrid summer. I had no clue of this at the time, but I did notice that they required our pre-teen selves to regularly consume salt tablets (I’m dating myself now – this would be strictly verboten now that we have, oh, I don’t know, actual science.). I later learned that this was a misguided attempt to counteract all the sweating that was going on. But we kids were having such a fun time goofing off in the outdoors that we actually didn’t notice any discomfort.
S’mores!
Whoa nelly! 600 comments and counting.
A bat in our camp cabin made an unforgettable night. Also loved learning to macrame then making bracelets for all the girls in our den. Thank you for the generous giveaway and for sharing the getaway. Looking forward to a photo or two.
Learning how to fish with my dad!
My first Girl Scout Camp cabin had 12 girls and 6 bunk beds! I was an only child who had never seen or slept in a bunk bed before. So fun, even if it was with straw stuffed in a casing for the mattress!
Making situpons and whittling on a stick with my Brownie pocketknife!
Not a camp memory, but we had a wonderful night catching lightning bugs last night. Then we went in and watched them through the windows before we got caught by too many hungry mosquitos.
camping in my little scamp camper in a State Park in Missouri that has a historic wool mill on site- it was heaven!
Grade school camp taught me how to drink water from a tap the “Camp Seely Way” One cups one’s hand under the tap and drink. For a twelve year old introvert who’d never gone camping it was genius. Thinking about it, that helped me become more intuitive. Ever since then I’ve drank water from the tap this way. Well when I just want a sip or two, otherwise I use a glass.,
I was very shy and camp wasn’t my favorite, but I loved canoeing. And s’mores, ’cause who doesn’t love s’mores?
I never went to camp! 🙁 But I’ve done lots of camping with family and friends. My favorite camp site is an island off the Maine coast: sleeping with the ocean breeze, the smell of pines, the rocky coastline for hiking, and lobster dinners available at the island’s little general store each night. Heaven!!
The only camp I’ve ever been to was actually two-week annual training stints every summer in The Ohio Army National Guard. It was hot, freezing cold, lots of hurry-up-and-wait, and some of the best times I’ve ever had! My grandkids and great-grandkids can say with pride that their Mimi wore army boots, shot a grenade launcher, and knows how to drive a 5-ton personnel carrier.
AND she knits, lol!
I’ve got some major envy going on. Wish I could go, especially since Tennessee is a lot closer than most knitting retreats. Unfortunately, it’s not really a getaway if you have to bring your kids, more of a take-along. Here’s hoping it’s everything you ever dreamed it would be.
Best camp memory would be band camp. It’s the only summer camp I ever did and as close to roughing it as I get. My favorite part was this amazing reflection pool they had in the middle of the campus. Perfect backdrop for some good old fashion teen angst.
Learning & singing camp songs while doing dishes in the mess hall & while marching back to cabins at night. Plus Taps & flag ceremony at dusk. Finally being tall enough for archery!
At 4-H Camp in the 60’s when we redeemed our messy cabin and reputation by pulling together to thoroughly organize and clean the cabin. We even scrubbed the bare wood floor. And it paid off. We were awarded the best cabin of the week.
What I remember most from my pre-teen sleepaway camp years are the wild emotions–highs and lows. Friendships and new “relationships” and all the hormonal intensity of those years. The contrast with a low-key adult knitting camp couldn’t be greater.
I had exactly one childhood camp experience (Camp Fire Girls, Camp Augusta, 1966-ish. I was desperately homesick the whole week. Adult “camp” experiences have been choral music workshops. Bliss!
sitting out under the stars with s’mores, good friends, and strong drinks!
Girl Scout Camp, mid-1970s. Our troop’s wild child, Bridget C., was hidden under my cot when I sat down on it one night before bedtime. She reached out from under the cot and grabbed my ankles, scaring the $&@} out of me! Maybe not my favorite but definitely my most memorable camp memory.
Girl Scout Camp – every single time 🙂
In general I loathed camp; I was painfully shy and not terribly skilled at figuring out my way around new places or understanding why the heck we were being marched from lanyards to swimming to lunch….but now that I’m forced to focus on the positive, I did actually enjoy when we got to do horseback riding.
Cheerleading camp in High School!!
Girl guide camp – learning different kinds of trees and bonfires.
I remember at Girl Scout camp being told not to ever have food in our tents. I figured how could one Hershey bar matter? In the morning it was covered with mouse nibbles!
My favorite camp was a winter camp and having hot apple cider after a busy day outside in the snow was great! No textile crafts there, tho.
The only time I went camping was as an adult….at a singles camp. I learned very quickly that I had to escape. I quietly repacked my car and drove down the winding road. I stopped for ice cream once I made it to the sane world. Normalacy returned.
Is it totally weird that I’ve never been to camp? But I’ll assume a beach weekend with girlfriend us close enough and say my favorite memory is exploring the surf with awesome women.
Waking up snuggled in my sleeping bag in the crisp, clear mountain air.
Already subscribed. I think my favorite camp memory is a toss-up between two: one, going out with a group late at night to lay in a field and stargaze, and two, waking up extra early to go watch the sun rise on the beach (we were in Maine).
My favorite camping memory was at Canyonlands National Park in Utah, when we looked up from our campfire and could see the Milky Way!
My best camp memory: Finally getting to ride a horse! Every day!
Favorite camp memory: sitting in a canoe on Lake Niobe, watching the bald eagle circle overhead, against the clear blue sky.
I never really went to camp. Except one weekend with my Dad. We went to Indian Princess camp. There was grape juice for breakfast, he had to do my hair and there was a trampoline….and a boring nature movie I fell asleep watching.
My fave camp memory is swinging from the cabin rafters singing “Great Balls of Fire” at the top of my lungs to the horror of the GirlScout troop leaders.
I loved camp! We went to a bungalow colony and went to camp from Wednesday to Monday. We had Tuesdays off so the dads could spend quality time with the moms on the weekends. One of my favorite memories was morning sing. Everyone would go to the camp house and we would all have to sit, listen to announcements, and then sing our camp songs. Every time I smell wood or a freshly cut tree, it brings me right back to those mornings.
Being out in the middle of the Cascades and getting up in the morning before anyone else…doesn’t get better than that!
I have wonderful memories of camping as a kid with my parents. . The sun, the beach, swimming in the sea; the food that tasted so good eaten outdoors. Forgotten (almost) was the sunburn, the mosquitoes and the snake found in the tent. I still love camping and spending time outdoors in nature.
Camp Roganunda…singing! and Polar Bear swim and campfires and Boulder Cave and s’mores and crafts and sending and receiving letters to and from home.
Nancy Jo – are you from Yakima? I’ve never been to Roganunda (I went to church camp at Camp Dudley) but have boulder cave memories.
I only went to real summer (church) camp once, and it was pretty awful – it included spending time hunkered under a picnic table during an incredible storm. But, my family camped every summer. We weren’t particularly outdoorsy, but camping meant we could afford to go places like Washington DC and DisneyWorld on vacation. We started in a tiny tent and sleeping bags, then moved to a larger tent, cots, a pop-up camper, and finally a small trailer – although they moved back to a pop-up camper after that.
My favorite memory of all this, though, happened after I was an adult, and I went with my parents in their trailer to a state park near where I lived in Texas. I had taken a walk around the campground and as I approached our camp site, I noticed a camper with pretty twinkly lights around the ‘patio.” I suddenly remembered how much I had wished as a child that our tent had twinkly lights like some others did – and then I realized that those twinkly lights were on our camper! While I was gone, Mom had strung lights outside – she had remembered how I had liked the little lights, so she had bought a string! It still makes me so happy just to think about it! ❤️
I have a few great camp(ing) memories! Mostly from when my girls were young. One time we went to San Diego Wild Animal Park for an overnight camp experience called “Roar n Snore”! The Park provided everything; tents, meals, entertainment, s’mores!!! Yum;) Sleeping in a 4 person tent hearing the sounds of wild animals during the night. In the morning they took us around the wild animal park in a tram to see the animals in their natural habitats. There was a baby rhino just born the night we were there!! That was memorable
Catching sand crabs in the dark with flashlights at 5th grade camp outting
We never were able to go to camp but my parents took us camping every year, My father liked the most secluded and wooded lots, which came with the most mosquitos too! Two of our favourite stories are when I locked my dad in the outdoor toilet (stinky), and when my brother fell out of the tent trailer in the middle of the night because I didn’t secure the side wall properly.
Oh, it was all about knots and lashing. I learned to knit from my mom around the same time, but I was fascinated by and obsessed with the knots and lashing in a way that no topic had done to me before. Foreshadowing of a fiber-dominated life to come, maybe!
Unfortunately I’ve never been to camp 🙁 but I love hearing about other people’s camp memories!
Never been to camp! Thanks for the chance to win!
S’mores!
Our family has rented a “camp” for a big family reunion every summer for almost 50 years. When I was young, my cousins and I used to take the rowboats and stay away all afternoon — exploring and having splash fights with the oars.
The only knitting ‘camps’ I have attended were Knit Nation 2010 and 2011, organised by Cookie A and Alice ‘Socktopus’ Yu at Imperial College, London, UK. So many firsts: at the 2010 camp I bought my first Wollmeise yarn, learned toe-up sock knitting from Marjan ‘Yarnissima’ Hammink, and numerous cast-ons and bind-offs from JC Briar (who had very large needles and a massive ball of i-cord yarn to demonstrate) and new friend Honey Lee taught me how to crochet during one lunch break. In 2011 I learned some cool stitches from Cookie A herself, vintage tailoring and finishing techniques from Susan Crawford, vintage lace edgings from Franklin Habit, and best of all, spindle spinning from the incredibly patient and inspiring Merike Saarnit. I stuck with the crocheting, sock knitting, and spindle spinning, and in 2014 I was able to take a spindling class with Abby Franquemont at Fibre East. The atmosphere at all these events was absolutely magical, and I made a ton of new friends. Sign me up for another knitting camp any day!
I never went to “sleep-away” camp, though I petitioned/begged for it annually for many years. My neighbor Joanie and her sister Nan spent two months at camp every summer, and talked about it for the other 10. Sounded like some kind of wonderland to me 🙂
Grooming the one-eyed horse Apache at Girl Scout camp. He was so grateful.
At girl scout camp, we would go on long hikes while taking turns shaking a jug. At the end ofthe hike, the jug was full of chocolate pudding! Magic!
I’ve attended knitting camp 2 times–a fun and rejuvenating experience! Fav–the free sharing of tips, tricks and knowledge—
When I was a chaperone at my daughter’s fifth grade camp – lots of laughter, tears (it was a group of pre-pubescent girls) – fun memories that make me smile today and we still talk about 15 years later.
Leaving camp
Favorite memory is the very funny letters my dad sent each day – which I just now realized were to make sure his 9 yr old daddy’s girl didn’t feel forgotten or get too homesick those three weeks, her first trip away from her family. He’s been gone almost 30 yrs now – sure wish I had saved those letters.
Staying up late and telling stories and making new friendships.
I’ve never been to camp but my favorite camping memory is from laying on a picnic table late at night. We were stargazing and I spotted my first satellite!
Camp fire smoke smell in clothing, lovely.
My favorite camp memory is running barefoot on trails worn smooth by my fellow campers, with the soles of my feet as smooth and tough as leather!
This must be so much better than 4-H camp. Wish I could be with you.
I loved summer camp! It was a place where I learned to waterski, and sail and canoe…being on the lake and in the woods with friends. Loved making those bead bracelets on those little looms (just saw one of those loons at Purl Soho while visiting NYC this week❤️ and it brought me right back to the Hills of New Hampshire).
Not exactly a camp story, but one year at Stitches South at Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, my friends starting writing a story called “Mowgli of the Opryland” about a boy who lives in Opryland’s verdant indoor climate-controlled jungles.
I have so many camp memories! One is the giant rock we would gather on to visit with each other. I saw a picture of it years later and it was not actually that big!
Years ago I was the art director at a girls camp in Maine on the Saco River and taught knitting to some of the campers.. Loved watching the girls explore a new world of creativity. A highlight was taking a field trip to a nearby yarn manufacturer where the owner graciously opened his home and farm to a group of wide-eyed pre-teen and teenage girls who were just beginning their journey into knitting and fiber.. From seeing the most gorgeous yarns in brilliant colors stacked in the barn lofts to seeing a spinning demonstration and making friends with owner’s pair of draft horses, i realized we were in the midst of a magical experience. This manufacturer is not open for public tours so I knew our visit was a once in a life time experience and that made it extra special We left with arms filled with yarn and the girls couldn’t stop talking about their visit on the way back to camp as we indulged on the best ice cream ever from a local dairy. I still have the sweater I made with the yarn I purchased that day and it always brngs back the fond memory of that wonderfully delightful afternoon.
Every time my friend and I went camping, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Nebraska, a stray dog would wander in. We shared our hotdogs and cheerios, then brought the dog to a local humane society. We always hoped they found their owners, or a new home.
While I have yet to attend any camps, it’s definitely at the top of my Bucket List! I dream of a knitting trip to Ireland/Scotland. Maybe some day…….
I only went to camp one year. My friend and I were a little too old to be campers but not yet old enough to be counselors so we spent the summer terrorizing the boys 🙂
camp was not part of my childhood but in my work with kids I get to hear all about it. One of my favorite things to hear are stories about camp names.
Brownie camp, the leaders got lost and we snowshoed what seemed like forever in the cold, then upon return got got chocolate and learned to crochet. I remember that day vividly, although I rarely crochet anymore. Knitting forever!
Learning to dance the Continental with six girls in a tiny cabin! More giggling than dancing.
Horseback riding.
I’ve never been to camp. Summer for me was long days at the family lake cabin. Bliss!
Favorite camp memory? Well, probably meeting my husband … is that too much of a copout answer?
Nature walks in the woods, swimming in the lake, and yummy homemade popovers and strawberry jam every Sunday for breakfast at the camp dining hall….
Several weekend camping trips with my Girl Scout troop. Loved the songs and skits in the evenings. The food tasted so good cooked outside and I never slept so well.!
Loved going to 4-H camp. Group activities and craft classes.
Northway Lodge, Algoquin Park Ontario Canada – Everyday at camp was memorable!!!
On my first family camping trip, my son, Adam, was 3 years old. We stepped outside after breakfast to take a walk. Just moments later, Adam stopped, and looking down with great surprise, he pointed down to his feet and said, “Ohhhh, a bear! Ohhhh, a bear!” It was, indeed,, a little black kitten!
Umm, we all went in a canoe….and the whole camp went down the stream and back but our boot, we could not figure it out so we just sat there and waited- – hahaha
S’mores!
Making friendship bracelets, sleeping outdoors, and singing rounds with what felt like 100 voices at Azalea Trails GS camp, circa 5th grade!
I’ve never been camping ⛺️! Would love to go to a knitting camp.
Knitting retreats were my first camp-like experience. I’ll never forget the first time I sat in a room of over 100 people who were all knitting. It was a transcendent experience!
I never got to go to camp-camp as a kid. But as an adult I sure do love to sit around a campfire wearing something I’ve knit while working on my latest project.
S’mores with flaming marshmallows and the scent of saltwater beaches
When we were young parents and funds were in short supply, camping was our go-to for family vacations. Today, my grown children still talk about all of the fun and great memories of those days. These memories are the best for me too!
I attended a “Night Owls” camp and we slept during the day and hiked and canoed under the moon and visited people whose jobs have them up at night like a baker and a nurse! Still my favorite camp ever.
When we would leave our 10-person (kid persons) tents on wooden platforms at Girl Scout Camp on the St.Lawrence River in the 1950’s for our morning activities… the staff would inspect our tents for tidiness and order. They would hang various coloured wooden stars outside to announce all around at change time the status of the inside of the tent’s occupants!
Our tent invariably had a wooden pink piggy hanging for all to see!
I actually never went to camp, but these days my family camps every summer and breakfast in a remote campsite is always one of my favorite things.
Between my family and girl scouts, I think I’d spent half my childhood at camp. I have so many fond memories from learning how to start fires, to orienteering through a scavenger hunt, to comrade that only comes when your a bunch of girls who haven’t showered i n days. My favorite trips were random weekends when we just piled into a car and met my dad at a out of the way campsite for a weekend away. I enjoyed those quiet times away from home even if they weren’t fancy or extravagant or even planned.
To this day I love the quiet of the nighttime woods, stargazing after smores, and the sharp scent of pine.
Wish I could be there! Now I must knit a Shakerag Top.
My most memorable 4H camp memory was boarding the ferry at Lake Erie and traveling to Kelly’s Island. Once there we explored the island and experiencing the glacial grooves gave me the first memory of being a very very small speck in the history of the world.
Favorite camp memory is waking up early and sitting out on a rock watching the sunrise over Long Lake in the Adirondacks. The mist hung a few inches over the water and the sun burned it away as it rose. It was magical. I can bring myself back to 1974 in an instant to that moment of beauty and solitude.
the sun rising over the lake
Having a bat swoop me on a night hike. Big deal for a suburbia child.
Camp. OMG. Once my husband, who was not yet my husband, and I went camping, which is not quite the same as going to camp. It rained. We played Crazy 8s in the Honda Civic. Other things must have happened but have been washed from my memory.
I’ve never actually gone away to camp. 🙂
Have fun this weekend!
First kiss!
Camp wasn’t really a thing for my large and beach loving family but I do have a favorite memory. It is watching my daughter walk towards me, after a week at Camp Carolina Trails, a camp for kids with type 1 diabetes, and seeing, really feeling, how much strength she had gained from that amazing group of people.
Camp sounds like a lovely time to unwind and knit!
I never went to camp, but I’d totally go to a knitting camp.
I never went to camp, but I really, really want to knit that top in Rustle. I have lots of knitting retreat memories but can’t possibly pick a favorite!
I loved getting the opportunity to meet so many amazing, talented people with interests that were similar to mine.
Mosquito bites!
S’mores of course!
Only had 1 camp experience as a child. One week at Campfire Girl camp at lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Sit-upons, sleeping in teepees, singing songs, and on the last night we sang WoHeLo (work health love) and launched little tin foil boats with candles across the lake. Thus began my love for sentimental rituals that might make me cry. Good times.
My favorite yarn- related camp memory involves finger knitting! I volunteer a week of my summer at Girl Scouts of Orange County Camp Scherman, and one afternoon of each session we ask counsellors to volunteer to lead an activity that would interest campers – swimming, nap time, singing, guitars, games, etc. I’ve volunteered to teach finger knitting the past two summers. Last summer I had over 25 campers sign up to learn, ranging in age from 7 to 15, yikes! A few other counsellors were drafted to help, and one of them in particular loved finger knitting so much that she took a skein of bulky weight yarn, finger-knitted the whole thing and turned it into a scarf!
I never went to a camp, but I have been campING. My favorite camping memory was probably when I first went backpacking. To think that this place, that I am standing has only been stepped on by other people who also took this journey. Amazing!
not having to explain that petting yarn is totally normal. That and maid service, food service, etc.
Most fun camp experience, age 10, having mice play in my hair and waking me up.
I never went to camp camp 🙁 But once my friend did and she came back cooing about this super great guy she met. And then I dated him. Then our friends had a massive, year-long feud over if the whole thing. So I guess that is my worst camp memory?
We used to camp on the eastern shore of Lake George in upstate NY during the 3rd week of August. We usually had a campsite on a bluff overlooking the lake. In the late afternoon I would sit on the bluff and knit while everyone else took a siesta. It was my favorite time of day.
Every year, the entire fifth grade at my elementary school went away for 4 days to a camp…it was magical. Just like the sleepaway camps I had read about in countless kids’ books. It was perfect.
Even though I went to sleep away camp for five summers, my favorite camp memory is actually visiting my kids at their camp. On parents visiting day, they would run down the hill and give us the biggest hug imaginable and I just loved that!
I went to theater camp and because of my awful sense of rythm, I almost broke my wrist during movement class by punch g the person next to me
It’s a tie between Girl Scout camp and 4H camp, but it was always about singing around the campfires .
Cooking bacon, wrapped on sticks, over an open fire, after a long hike. It was perfect.
On a black fly infested, sleep deprived overnight trip with my bunk, along the Lake Superior shore, being rewarded with dazzling display of the Northern Lights dancing across the sky.
Went on a Girl Guide camp aged 11, it rained, but still enjoyed the open air cooking, and was photoed for the local newspaper with 2 others cooking sausages over an open fire. Great memories!
Sitting around the campfire.
I went to Tanera Mor for a Ripples Craft Retreat run by Helen Lockhart. It is a small island in the Summer Isles on the Northwest coast of Scotland. Drinking coffee and knitting with Nancy and Marcia who had come all the way from Seattle watching the sun coming up over the mountains and walking around this frog infested paradise with the more active participants without a care in the world and knowing that someone else had cooked the dinner……wonderful. I hope your getaway is just as good…..though possible fewer frogs might make it easier to walk across the grass at night. X
Frito bag chili n s’mores. The most exotic food a 9 year old ever had.
I like winter camping: Playing in the snow in the dark afternoon (I live in Alaska), and carefully setting the fire for s’mores, getting sticky mittens, singing all the camping songs.
I had such a good time with my Girl Scout troop that we’re still friends 35 years later.
We go to family camp every year – every morning, there is a polar bear dip in the often rather chilly lake. My favourite memory: watching my youngest (then 4) reach out his hands to project “the force,” making his dad fall over backwards with a big splash. Another favourite memory: knitting on the beach with other kindred knitters.
Camp was finding myself. It was hot dogs campfires new friends and where I learned how to knit. My mother never knew how. She crocheted. I made a horrid scarf the first year and got better each year.
Thanks for the giveaway and the memories.
Church camp as a child….I was very homesick and missed my dog
Fond memories of evenings around the dining room table with wonderful creative lovely knitters in BayView, MI. Always go home feeling renewed!
My favorite camp memory is waiting to happen. But any time spent away with knitters is a good time.
Seeing all the stars in the sky. I grew up in the city and never saw so nany stars as when I was at camp.
Never went to a proper summer camp. I grew up in a time when my mom would open the kitchen door and tells us to “go play outside”. We weren’t expected to come back in until it was time to eat. Not even for a drink of water – which we would happily get from the outside spigot if we were thirsty! Good memories that my mind plays back as I sit and knit over sixty years later…
Drinking bug juice!
Making smores
My best camp memory is the first steak I cooked after a long day of hiking. So delicious.
My first time at camp (as a Brownie) I came home absolutely covered in mosquito bites. I was never a good camper!
Singing camp songs like a military platoon when we walked to the next activity-camaraderie!
Favorite camp memory is sneaking away to the horse barn.
I had a collapsible tin cup with my name engraved on it for Girl Scout Camp circa 1962-3 in the Georgia woods. Best part of camp!
On the way back from camp, we were riding in the back of the truck and our camping gear caught fire (from a passing motorist throwing out a cigarette?)!
I have been lucky enough to attend Meg Swansen’s Knitting Retreat for about 9 years and the reason I love going back is that the regulars have become my family of choice. And every year there are new members to get to know and add to my family.
I remember singing silly songs at the nightly gatherings. Most memorable “Just plant a watermelon right above my grave and let the juice run through “
Riflery, archery, hiking down the gorge to swim under the waterfall. Outdoor activities were great at church camp.
Waking up in the morning and the air was so cold and damp but the campfire was so cheery and warm. I still love a good fire to cuddle up to!
I never got to go to camp. I would love to start with knitting camp!
My favorite memory of camping so far is a recent 4 day trip to the lake with dear husband, kids and sweet grandchildren! I even got in a little knitting!
Favorite memory is camping when the kids were little. No phone. No tv. No friends. Just US. Wonderful family time. Made our family unit stronger.
Used to go to a knitting camp in Colorado. Met great knitters and great instructors. So enjoyed this time away to relax and learn. The beautiful setting and the beautiful people.
I remember so much fun hiking – and all the bug bites that resulted!
Watching the sun come up over the river, sitting in a field of Queen Anne’s lace and black eyed Susan’s .
Camp Ondesonk was my favorite! Staying in a different lodge each year and having the final night in an all stone grotto and watching skits. Love. Least fave memory of camp? Being stung in my mouth by a bee. 😉
Favorite camp memory involves our son who was 7 and had just returned from a week at camp. When I opened his suitcase the clothes were so neatly folded that I praised him on how nicely he had taken care of his things. His reply was that it was easy as he never changed his clothes the whole week at camp! Well, at least he brought back all that he had taken.
My knitting group, the “Knitless Witters”, goes to a retreat every year in February. Last year we had a mystery giveaway – we all knit the same pattern – a skinny scarf – out of whatever yarn we wanted, then put them in numbered lunch bags. Each person drew a number and got the corresponding scarf. It was amazing to see how different the pattern looked in all the different yarns – plus how everyone seemed to draw something that was just right for her!
The feeling of relaxation, like that magical sense you have as a kid that you have all the time in the world!
After a very scheduled busy morning, I would look forward to the rest time after lunch!
Also, we had special interest groups. In one group, I learned how to crochet kippots.
Learning and singing We Shall Overcome. Brought me to tears.
Eating s’mores around a campfire at Girl Scout camp! Loved those burned and melted marshmallows.
Shakerag – the perfect pattern in my book! Not too complicated & looks great on everyone. Now if we had just been allowed to wear our own clothes at camp… Not a fan of the stiff heavy cotton top & shorts & orange necktie, but oh the songs drifting up to the skies by the campfires at night! 9 years at the same camp – strangers became lifelong friends, we learned, failed, and learned to try again a bit harder. Gained respect for nature, for one another, and for the blessing of huge swaths of time shared in safety. Would dearly love to be able to give each & every child today such a time of peace.
Going to Girl Scout camp with my sister and three of our friends. We grew up near the Erie Canal in New York State. We sang “Barges” in harmony. Barges,I would like to go with you, I would like to sail the ocean blue. Barges, have you treasures in your hold? Do you fight with pirates brave and bold…
My one and only time at camp was a two week Girl Scout camp. I sliced open my thumb while whittling!
I only went to camp once, as part of 6th grade camp. I remember the college aged counselor at breakfast put oatmeal in her mouth then motioned with her hand like she was turning a grinder and it oozed out of her mouth! Yucky but we thought it was awesome!
Favorite camp memory: picking wild blueberries in the woods and taking them to the cooks in the camp kitchen – a small tin meant blueberry pancakes for your table at breakfast and a large tin meant a blueberry pie at dinner.
I love everything about camp, early morning noises from all the birds and animals, and the stars at night, oh my!
I went to a day camp in town. I got a bunch of splinters in my butt from sliding down trees that had fallen. The splinters weren’t fun but the sliding was a blast.
Eating Smores!
Counselor Crush
My favorite camp memory is getting to go back home to indoor plumbing.
My favorite camp memory is knitting in the pool at TwinSet Summer Camp.
Polar bear swims and campfires!
Hiking and playing in the creek!
My favourite camp memory would probably be from when i was a counselor at a camp for people with disabilities. That camp knew how to do a campfire singalong! Never was there such heart as at camp misquah.
The camaraderie that goes along with being at any camp retreat – like minds doing something we love!
The freshness of the morning air
Only went to Camp once, Camp Hoffman, a Girl Scout camp in Rhode Island, it was not a pleasant week for this 12 year old, I was afraid of the water!
Swimming in west Okoboji lake.
I never went to sleep away camp, but I have vivid memories of a camp wide game of hide and seek in the rain. People were in the rafters of barns, hiding with animals, up trees, such fun. No knitting, but we did make friendship bracelets and macrame.
Camp Tekakwitha circa late Sixties – paddling out in the early morning in a canoe with my cousin, trying to find and capture turtles sunning themselves on fallen logs.
Sitting on the end of the dock with our feet dangling in the water at Lake Vernon, and laughing with my best friend until dark… then leaning back and watching the stars as they came out… Almost 40 years later, that’s still one of my favourite memories!
I never went to camp, but my favorite memory is picking up my daughter from Girl Scout camp. I thought she wouldn’t like it, but she asked whether she could come back. I signed her up for the next week.
When I was at camp as a child (camp Monroe, in the pine forests of the sandhills of North Carolina) I lost a tooth and was very worried that the tooth fairy wouldn’t find me. But she did and the next day I was 10 cents richer!
I was a Camp Fire Girl growing up and while we didn’t do much camping, we did work on building camp fires. We all walked to an old quarry near our leader’s house and had lots of adult help learning the fine art of building fires. I have two wood stoves in my house today, so this has been a useful skill for me.
My family camped each year for vacation. Loved it!
I have never been to camp as a kid. I now camp with my family.
My grandparents sent me to sailing camp one summer, a luxury my family couldn’t afford. You can bet I made the best of it. Most of the girls spent a lot of time sunbathing, but my camp friend A. and I sailed and did all the other camp activities. We were the only girls to get certified to sail the biggest boat (~20’?), and signed one out as soon as we passed the test. We raised the mainsail, and it wouldn’t stay up. But the wind had already carried us out into the sound a bit so we were in a pickle. One of us held the crank to keep it up, and the other womanned the tiller. Shortly, the owner of the camp zoomed up in a motorboat. He came alongside, and yelled out that “we had forgotten the keys to our boat.” A. and I were confused, until he took two small keys off his key ring and told us to jam them in the winch so it would hold, and with a twinkle in his eyes said next time crank the sail the other way so the ratchets would do their job. We spent a few hours sailing, and each of us kept a key when we got back. I still have mine. Still no boat of my own, but I try to remember the cap’n’s kind and creative way of dealing with our mistake when dealing with life.
I’ve only been to camp once. I think it was an overnighter with Brownies. My friend and I found a real apple tree with lovely, tiny, sour apples on it. We ate a lot of them and brought a shirt tail full back to camp. This was the 60s, so allowing two 6 year olds to explore the forest on their own was no big deal. Anyway, one of the grownups made us stand in the bathroom while everyone else broke camp. I think she thought we were going to expel from one end or the other (we didn’t – ha).
One time, when the guiders where coming around to tell us all we had to be quiet and go to bed, I had the brilliant idea to tell the other girls in my tent that we should be quiet, so that they thought we were already asleep, and then we had the loophole that they never told us we had to go to sleep now. It might have worked had I thought to announce this plan earlier, but you know how you can hear people talking through tent walls? The guiders didn’t just tell us to go to sleep, they let us know that they’d heard the plan. (Speaking from experience, they were probably biting back laughter.)
Drinking “bug juice” and singing funny songs around the campfire.
Singing that ridiculously long campfire song that starts “Once an Austrian went yodeling on a mountaintop high…” while sticky from s’mores at Camp Greenwood and covered in dirt and bug bites, that was a good time.
Omg!! I hated camp. Only went one year ♀️
I so enjoy camping out with my knitting buddies on Knit in Public Day, and solo, at at Maine State Parks!
My first boyfriend at music camp. The pines, the lake, the loons calling.
The only camp I’ve ever been to was a fishing camp in Canada. Went with my sister and brother and grandparents. I still talk about it even though it was 40+ years ago. The no-seems (a biting bug) and the mosquitoes loved me very much. But it was still great fun.
Summer before 7th grade and the movie “Grease” had just come out. We sang all the songs and talked about how cute John Travolta is.
I only went to camp once and it was not my cup of tea. I guess I am a city girl at heart.
My fav camp memory was when my friend dropped her flashlight in the Biffy. You could see the illumination from a long ways away! We decided we didn’t want it anymore.
4-H camp at Allerton Park near Monticello, IL. A week of great fun back in the 60’s!
Singing camp songs:) I still sing them much to my kids’ chagrin.
The cool deliciousness of clean, clear waters and warm nights chasing fireflies.
Arts & Crafts at Day Camp when I was young – so much fun to create with such a variety of supplies.
Favorite camp memory was boating in the marshes off of the Isle of Hope, GA. Thanks for the giveaway!
Ahhh. . .any camp building that included a screen door on a spring that would swing closed “wham” as anyone went in or out. Somehow that sound–heading to swim, returning from a swim–just captures the relaxation and fun of camp for me.
Loved the polar bear club – early morning swimming.
Singing songs around the campfire!
I’ve never been to camp but live it vicariously trough my kids. The endless songs for everything are so, so fun.
I didn’t attend camp much as a girl but once my daughter became involved in Girl Scouts, that changed. I went from leader to the planning committee and to the one making the annual craft project, devised by others, happen. I was “caught” knitting on the bus to camp one year and the coordinator said “one year, we’ll have a knitting/crochet project”. That was supposed to be this year but due to a bad storm our Camporee was cancelled for this year. This is my daughter’s last year in GS but I’ll be around for another year and hopefully make it to “adult only” camp in October. Someone donated “a bunch of yarn stuff”, according to the camp director and she’d like “help” organizing it. Will work for S’mores!
Singing around the campfire.
Looking up at the vast evening sky and trying to count the stars!
At day camp, we painted rocks and glued plastic animals to the top. I remember thinking it was SO beautiful that I gave it to my dad as a Father’s Day Gift. He used it as a paperweight on his dresser for probably 30 years (until all the animals fell off). It was not really as beautiful as I thought it was when I was 6 years old, but it always made me smile to see it on his dresser.
I haven’t been to a knitting camp yet but I’ve attended Summer Rug Hooking Camp in Woodstock CT for several years now. Great fun with my “hooker” friends and always learn something new!
I sleep thru a rain and wind storm and my tent mates were so angry with me in the morning!
I never went to camp as a camper, but my favorite experience of my entire life is being a camp counselor at the Easter Seals Handicamp. Assisting others to have their best camp experience, and typically their best experience of their year, was amazing.
I didn’t come to “my camp” until adulthood. Camp Little Notch was, at the time, a Girl Scouts Camp on an exquisite plot of pristine Adirondack Wilderness near Lake George, NY. I worked there as a supervisor the summer after I graduated from college and have kept visiting in the 20 years since. Best memory was leading a group of middle school girls on an overnight trip up Buck Mountain — specifically, sleeping under the stars and waking to find a row of 11 and 12 year-old girls sitting silently with their arms around each other watching the sun rise over the mountain.
Since then, the Girl Scouts decided to offload the camp and a group of alums purchased it. Camp Little Notch is still going strong as an independent camp and I still go back every chance I get. I hope my stepdaughter can attend some day.
My favorite camp memory—I went to Girl Scout sleepaway camp and my favorite memory was my introduction to honey butter. It’s all about the food!
Camping with my husband and dog in Maine. One rainy day, we rented a small cabin. Our dog Alice jumped up on the bed and gave a huge sigh of relief! Finally, a comfy, indoor, bugles place to sleep!
Went to cheerleading camp in high school…does that count? Was fun to be at the lake!!
S’mores. The answer is s’mores.
I’ve never been to a knitting camp, but I love waking to the sound of birds and the gentle morning sun when backpacking!
My favorite camp memory is putting on a wet bathing suit for morning swim!
Being an archery master at the age of 10 – apparently I missed my calling! (They don’t seem to use balloons on targets in the Olympics, but I still think I would be great at it).
French braids, friendship bracelets, friendship pins on shoelaces, and the smell of the lake in the mist coming through the woods on the walk to breakfast.
Riding the zipline as an (acrophobic) adult volunteer at our church’s girls camp almost 25 years ago. So! Much! Fun!
My favorite camp memory was going home! I’m just not a dirt and bugs kind of gal!
Popsicle stick art at day camp when I was six years old. Maybe this is what started my love of all kinds of crafts?
Knit Local Getaway hosted by Sarapomegranite was amazing. Memories and forever friends made!
Backwards Day, where all activities and meals were reversed, starting with a turkey dinner for breakfast.
My favorite camp memory is of a yoga camp, tag-teaming the days’ events with my husband so we could both enjoy half while the other entertained our 1-1/2 year old.
I’m 37 and I’ve never been camping! Eeek!
Love knitting getaways! Can’t wait to participate next year!
Camping out in a game park in Zimbabwe with my future husband.
I have never been to knitting camp but would love to go!
My favorite camp memory is of my two sons’ first time at camp. After 2 weeks, they returned home with the tube of toothpaste still in the box in which I packed it. When I inquired why they had not even taken it out of the box, they explained (with a note of exasperation in their voices) that they hadn’t had any time–during the full two weeks–to brush their teeth!
I went to church camp, but nevertheless, it was all connected up with knitting because a babysitter taught me when I was ten or eleven. Whether you’re 10, 20 or 80, there’s nothing as relaxing as sitting out of doors with two needles and some yarn.
I went to several music festivals where we camped. Tent camping in the rain is not my cup of tea!
Catalina island girls camp….if only they had knitting as a craft activity……the stars and water and friends made…..
Swimming!!!!
Oh, wish I could have gone on the retreat. Looks wonderful! Thanks!
Flopping on the warm wood of the dock after a vigorous swim in a cold cold lake.
Favorite camp memory is definitely singing around the campfire… classic! And my goodness, that yarn and that sweater….. I have no words! Oh, maybe one: spectacular!
Being able to go to day camp with my siblings is my favorite camp memory
Any one that has indoor plumbing!
S’mores and sitting around the campfire, laughing and talking with friends.
Something really lovely could be made with the skeins of Jade Sylph in this giveaway! I would love to win this!
My favorite memory is church camp in 5th grade telling ghost stories after dark!
Favorite memory camping is with my kids fishing in Pennsylvania with my husband’s family at lake Pymatuming
Camping in a game park in Zimbabwe with my future husband 28 years ago.
Our knitting group has had a fall retreat for 16 years. We go every November to a hotel and spend the week knitting, sharing, learning, and eating! Most years we teach a new technique or project to the group. What a wonderful group of ladies and heartwarming memories!
Running back to camp with my friend because We thought We heard a bear then for some unknown reason stuffing my mouth with marshmallows upon getting to my tent.
Favorite camp memory from my childhood was learning how to build a fire. As an adult, sitting at the fire in the morning, a cup of coffee next to me and knitting in my hands.
I remember going to Girl Scout Camp – does that count?? We made a campfire and cooked chili and told stories …. my first girlfriends “hygge” experience… we didn’t knit, but we made potholders (of course!)…. I am already a Subscriber… hope to win!
I didn’t go away to summer camp as a child, but my family often camped together. One year we travelled all over Eastern US and Canada, seeing as many Major League Baseball games as we could in the process. I fondly remember cheering for our beloved Montreal Expos in Boston, (earning some glares in the process), listening to the after game show around a campfire, and visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I wasn’t a knitter yet, but I made my family stop at every bookstore we passed until my suitcase was almost too heavy to lift. We sang, ate, bickered, laughed, had two flat tires, and didn’t shower often enough. It was glorious.
I was a Camp Nurse at a boys camp in Northern Quebec for a summer, as well as having worked there as a kitchen girl in my teens. The best fun was opening day, when excited kids were everywhere, settling in and learning the ropes. Closely followed by the peace that settled over the camp when they left on extended canoe trips.
Going to a knit it public event today so I will think of you all on your wonderful weekend outing. Next year in Tennessee!
I am excited to follow the virtual camp experience! Loved the first three episodes of First Tamgo in Halifax ( how did I miss this before??). I have done a lot of knitting to it and appreciate the tip. Please enter me in the drawing!
I got horribly homesick my first time at Girl Scout Camp. The camp nurse put me in bed and gave me my first cup of tea- with honey and lemon. I’ve been drinking tea ever since. And I’m a nurse now.
Camp crushes are the memories that first come to mind … the older boy, redhead, played James Taylor songs on guitar around the campfire … I was a mess!
Being a cabin mom for my son’s class camp out. Getting up in the middle of the night and hiking to the bathroom….without my glasses. Coming out of the bathroom blinded by the light and coming face to face with a large deer. Realizing that the cabin was lost in the darkness, stumbling toward cabins and mercifully choosing the right one.
It looks like MDK camp is in a beautiful spot! My Girl Scout camp was on a lovely lake.
There was so knitting but there were lots of fun crafts and sports.
Have a great weekend! Grace
Cooking marshmallows over a moonlit night fire! My first taste of s’mores!
I’ve been to one knitting Retreat over a decade ago! Lots of fun, lots of yarn, lots of friends! Time to go to another one!
I really loved singing in the dining hall after meals. I remember most of the songs 35 years later!
I didn’t enjoy camping as a kid and I don’t really enjoy it now. Some things just don’t change!
The camp that I remember fondly is my husband’s camp on Galway Lake. Nothing like getting up in the morning, getting a cup of coffee and settling in to a rocking chair on the front porch overlooking the lake. Pure relaxation!!
Only one long weekend of Girl Scout Camp and I loved every minute of it: sleeping in platform tents, the counselor with the cool name: Andy and a cooler hat that I asked for when I got home, singing songs around the campfire…I made sure to pass it on to my daughters and they loved camp too!
Camp Fire camp and sailing in Puget Sound
My favorite camp memory is from the summer between freshman and sophomore year in high school. I was the makeup maven, and one night when there was a special event going on i had people lined up outside my cabin waiting for me to “do their eyes.” This was the 80s, so it involved A LOT of eyeliner and sparkly blue.
My favorite Girl Scout camp memory is listening to the counselors sing us to sleep in our cabins. Such a sweet and comforting gesture for us wee first-time Brownie campers.
I go camping all the time,but the only been to a Camp twice. Both times was quite a few years ago I went to a Camp in the Okanagan Valley in BC Canada. Both times it was a spinning camp with Judith MacKenzie. It was so much fun. Wish we could have it again.
For better or worse one of my favorite camp memories is from being in Chicago Park District day-camp as a surly 10 or 11 year old. We were on a field trip to the movies (city kids, eh?, you gotta go where the air-conditioning is) and this older boy who had been bullying me all week finally pushed me over the edge. I whipped my empty pop cup at him, not even aiming really, and the bottom of the cup got the little jerk right in the eye. HA!
He was fine- just a little bruised. I got in trouble, which I hardly recall, but he left me alone after that. And after the end of that month I never had to go back to day-camp.
Sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows and singing camp songs…so much fun!
Favorite memory – ah! Hunkered down in a small tent, sheltered from a freezing cold and windy rainstorm during a nine- day kayaking trip in Alaska. There’s something incredibly wonderful about knowing you can take care of yourself and be safe, toasty warm and dry in the elements with the simplest of equipment. It was glorious! (And during the storm, watching iceberg bits float by in the sea is simply awesome!)
A knitting camp? Best idea I’ve heard.
Girl Scout camp making S’mores and fishing using bits of bread as bait because I wouldn’t touch the worms! Using my situpon that was made from a Charlie Chips potato chip can.
I wasn’t lucky enough to be a “camp kid” but I do camp. My favourite camping experience was having my kids and stepkids join my new husband and me on our camping honeymoon. Sitting around the fire, enjoying great food, laughing together, knitting (me, of course), becoming a family is a sweet memory. Five years later, we are having a reprise with a “Brady Bunch” camping trip—with 7 of our 8 kids, 4 of their partners, 2 grandkids and likely some four-footed friends. There will be sitting around the fire, enjoying great food, knitting (me, of course) and making more special memories.
My favorite camp memory is making bread pies in a campfire!
Two toasty pieces of bread with canned cherry pie filling inside, sealed around the edges by the special “pie iron” …… so much better than Hostess! Yum!
I never went to camp as a kid, but I’ve spent lots of time in remote field camps. From a knitting perspective the highlight so far was having a group of us relaxing outside at 78 degrees North, all knitting. Some of those scarves came in handy later that summer!
My family was canoeing/camping the Peace River in Florida when my son, age 6, fell out of our canoe while doing some goofy dance move. Luckily, by the time his head popped back up out of the water my father-in-law in the canoe behind us was able to scoop him right up. The look on that boy’s face was priceless. We laugh about it still.
My favorite thing about camp was always the smell of the ponderosa pines. 🙂
My friend and I decided that when we were at camp we were going to tie dye our underwear. Unfortunately, we chose red and well, let’s just say we did not get the effect we were looking for! Oh, and we shaved our legs for the first time. Such wild rebels!
The memory I have about camp is “mug -up” in the evening – hot chocolate tastes better at camp. Also the sight of phosphorous in the water when paddling in the late evening
RV-ing through Yellowstone and Grand Teton! And having a sort-of-scary, potentially- fatal, encounter with a HERD of buffalo during a photo op with an “old-fashioned” camera that made a VERY LOUD whining noise as it re-wound a spent roll of film… 20 buffalo all turned their heads en masse and LOOKED RIGHT AT ME… then the lead guy started stampeding them… in the opposite direction.
Great memories of Camp Disatel in the Washington mountains as a 6th grader. So much fun crafting and exploring nature.
My favorite camp memory is sitting around the fire and talking into the night!
Well heck! You all have a great time at Sewanee! Maybe I’ll see you next year…
We go to a camp in the Wet Mountains for knitting retreats. It’s great fun hanging out and showing our creations from blind drawings that we do at the previous retreat. This year I am producing something in fingering weight, cables, and gradient coloring.
My ‘camp’ is an off-the-grid cabin in central British Columbia where I enjoy family get-togethers. . .boating, swimming, games campfires and big breakfasts cooked on the wood cook stove. And lots of knitting, of course!
Making bacon over a fire!
Girl scout camp with my mom – there were a lot of us at home, so it was rare to have my mom do something just with me and not “going everywhere in a bunch” as my sister used to say.
Spending time as a family together. Swimming as often was a person wanted to! Everything tastes better when cooked outside.
I’ve never been to that sort of group camp, but as a kid I used to go camping in a tent with my siblings and grandfather. Lots of fond memories of wandering the campgrounds and climbing big rocks.
In September for the past 15 years, I have attended a needlework and craft camp at a Methodist camp site near Rockaway Beach, OR. The camp,is right in the beach, which is flat and walkable for miles on that part of the coast. One year we were there during a combination of extreme high tides and a storm off the coast. It was really exciting to see the tide coming all the way up the beach and onto the paths in the higher dunes that were usually a distance from the water. And walking the beach the next morning, seeing how huge logs had been tossed around, was quite amazing. I have so many good memories of camps there, fellowship, beach time, flying kites, projects completed. Sharing camp time as an adult is a very rewarding experience!
The only camp I’ve ever been to was when I was seven years old and I was so homesick that I cried the whole time until my parents came to take me home. Bet I’d be a lot better now!
Full moon , little breeze and s’mores…doesn’t get any better.
So intrigued by the Shakerag top. In two weeks my knitting buddies and I will be having our annual knitting retreat in Buena Vista CO. I think this is something we would all love to tackle! Every year we laugh so much it hurts!
It’s so much fun meeting other knitters, exchanging tips and having tea together
I remember that time Sheila got so high on cashmere fumes, she tried to teach the alpaca entrelac!
My favorite camp memories are tied to a Girl Scouts. Singing songs, learning how to canoe, make solar ovens, shoot a bow and arrow. I loved being a scout!
Donkeys and a rope swing at Methodist Church sleepaway camp!
My favorite camp memory….picking blackberries so mom would make us blackberry crisp, yep, I was super spoiled. 🙂
Being evacuated by the Marines from Girl Scout Camp in Japan when a typhoon was headed our way!
Most vivid memories of Girl Scout camp was having to drop the tent poles and secure camp in order to head to a basement in the nearest down due to severe thunderstorm warnings–every year. the first night.
My favorite camping memories are from the bluegrass festival with my mother-in-law. There was great music, great people, great weather. I did a scavenger hunt for newbies that was a blast.
She is an amazing woman, and she is starting chemo next week. No cure possible. Hoping for a longer life with better quality. She’s in a lot of pain right now.
I will be knitting during chemo sessions, she likes to see what I’m making.
Waking up in the early dawn hours, hearing the birds sing in the quiet woods.
Years ago a friend and I would go camping at least once a month, I would bring my bike, go for an early morning ride, eat, make special cocktails, play in the water, build a fire in the evening and just relax. It always was a great get away!
I never went to camp as a child, but a few years ago my best friend and I left our husbands behind and went to Colorado for a week at a dude ranch. With all the horseback riding, archery, skeet shooting, swimming, and eating, it was absolutely like a kid camp for adults! Of course, my knitting went along, too.
LOVED Girl Scout camp with some of my best girlfriends – got to stay at “the best” campsite (since we were a little older) and learned sailing!
My favorite camp experience was a summer math camp in Lesley, MA where I learned to approach math problems by using a variety of problem solving strategies. Every knitter is a mathematician and I have used what I learned in every project since!
I remember: Being worn out by a day full of friends, activities, swimming in the lake, sunning on the dock, stories and smores by the campfire and finally, most deliciously…feeling so very happy and contented on the screened in porch, being cooled and lulled to sleep by the the wind rustling in the trees and lazily peeking at the heat lightning as it flashed through the sky. Such carefree and magical days.
My favorite camp memory was winning a bracelet! Maybe i’ll Have the same luck here
When I was young I went to camp and I and few of the girls saw a boy peeing off the edge of his cabin and, of course, we teased him. Then his guy friends all started peeing in front of us and it became a thing. I love this because his homies went all out so he wouldn’t be embarrassed and I’m pretty sure they just did it spontaneously, not all planned. Kids can be so mean, love to remember that they, in fact, have each other’s backs.
Favorite camp memory: throwing up in the camp tent in the middle of the night. Sort of sums up my entire and only camp experience.
My favourite camp memory would be making crafts at girl guide camp, we learned so my fun things.
This isn’t exactly a favorite but it is memorable. While I was at camp, my mother wrote to me that they had bought a new house and a new car. She didn’t give me any details on the car or new home. i was convinced that they were going to leave me at camp and I wouldn’t be able to find my family. Obviously, I was too young to understand that you didn’t move into a house the day you bought it.
My grandparents pastured their cattle in the mountains, so most summer weekends we went there with them.
One clear night, I walked outside, up a hill and just sat in the dark looking at the sky. With no moon, no manmade light sources visible and far from any towns or cities, my eyes adjusted and I could see more stars than ever. I had heard or read the word starshine, now I knew what it looked like. Everything was bathed in a soft silvery glow coming from everywhere overhead. I’ll never forget how beautiful it was.
We used to take our sixth graders to wilderness camp. You haven’t experienced camping unless you’ve fallen into the bog, twice.
At camp I used to fall asleep with a transistor radio (people of a certain age will know what this is) under my pillow. Favorite bedtime song: Bill Withers, Lean on Me…
Girl Scout camp- I remember a night out under the stars and too many hotdogs consumed.
I loved jumping off the dock!
My favorite camp memory was many moons ago. In Girl Scout camp we were all braiding lanyards, and I found that not only was I good at it, I enjoyed myself too. This lead to other ‘handwork’ which eventually lead me into learning how to knit from my sister, and teaching myself to crochet. I have enjoyed doing both as well as sewing for many years now.
swimming in lakes!
Best thing about summer camp – the peace and quiet before most people are up. Time to absorb nature.
Favorite camp memory: anything to do with the campfire. Warm, beautiful, inviting. Loved to sit and watch the flames, talking and sharing and the s’mores!!
Roasting marshmallows on the campfire. The smells, the smoke, the wood embers, the burnt edges—all wonderful!
Swimming after practing and marching for miles at band camp. Those were bikini days!
Never been to camp!
Hot dogs and marshmallows around a campfire!
My favorite memory is of camping with my best friends, once we had a super rainy day so Les hung some large tarps, we sat around and played word games. Another memory was of sitting around a campfire one night while Chris taught toddler Caroline the “take me out to the ballgame” song, she was a great Cubs fan. Great times!
Enjoying the friendships of so many people that I met.
So many great memories from camp through the years, but the best for me was the evening campfire with songs, skits, jokes, and loads of camaraderie!
Music camp! Music everywhere, musicians everywhere — what’s not to love?
Camp Tanadoona 1963 tye-dyed scarfs and buried them in glass pickle jars to be dug up years later. Of course we wore the headscarf all week and buried them on the last day.
Warm cheese and tomato sandwiches after a hike at Girls Scout camp.
Also Squam 2010 – Best cabinmates Ever!!!!
Flipping perfect pancakes on a huge griddle, after the batter has risen up to ensconce all the fat blueberries dotting each one—flames from a locust and white pine fire licking beneath. . .
Girl Scout Jamboree circa 1978. Two tents and 30ish girls. Rain and a leaky tent. 15 girls have to move to the other tent and to station wagons with the moms and all the things were sodden. Awful and cold and miserable but still a fun memory.
I’ve been to camp only once. I didn’t want to go, was homesick. But of course when it was time to leave, I didn’t want to go.
My favorite memory was when my dad was the director for our church camp. The last evening he gave a speech to us about having fun while being safe. He didn’t want to have to take anyone to the emergency room. Later that night, he would give a tarzan yell and we would all run to find him. Then a few moments he would yell from another spot and we would chase again. The last time he yelled, someone was closer than he expected and he ran right into a tree. Guess who went to the emergency room!?!
I don’t remember a lot from camp, but I’m sure spending time with friends and roasting marshmallows on a campfire were good times.
I’ve never been to a knitting get away/camp but I’d love to!
Went to Camp Frontier for Young Life Camp in Colorado during high school. BEST TIME EVER.
My silliest camp prank was putting an innocent toad into our dignified 4-H camp leader’s private bathroom. I fear our convulsions of laughter gave us away!
I am sitting at a campground on Cape Cod knitting in public and I am not alone! Knitters are everywhere. This will be a great memory.
Roasting marshmallows and star-gazing!
My favorite camp memory was when all of us campers built little boats, put small candles on them. Everyone gathered around the pool at night and launched their candle lit vessel to the Cum Bi Yah. At the end campers said a silent prayer in hopes of returning the next summer. Magical.
Never went to Camp, but have done a bit of camping…my favorite memory is sitting around the campsite talking and laughing with friends and then suddenly noticing several deer walking by; we we all got very quiet trying not to spook them…
1979 & we all were awaiting Skylab to crash back to Earth. Our camp counselors wrapped watermelons in aluminium foil, woke us in the middle of the night and showed us the “skylab remnants”. We were terrified, and only the midnight watermelon feast made us feel safe again.
The sound of the mighty Pacific Ocean always makes me feel at peace. As a child, I would spend hours climbing rocks and exploring tide pools.
My favorite camp memory is when I was a counselor in high school. We had “jungle day” and I went as “Indiana Liz” after raiding the wierd collections of stuff in the hall closet at home, I had a pith hlemet and whip and everything! (It was the 80s, no one worried about whips.)
This was the same camp where they threw me into the pool on my birthday and missed. Slid me across the deck instead. Fun times
I actually went to camp for the first time 2 years ago! It was Camp Gone to the Dogs. Yes, a week of camp for dog owners and their pet(s). A total blast playing and learning new skills, even swimming in the pond.
A really eye opening good time- who would have thought.
Knitting camp sounds fun! I “camp” in my backyard, writing, as much as a I can.
What I love the most about Camp is living with friends, talking face to face and spending the gorgeous days of summer together.
The first time I slept outdoors in a sleeping bag on the ground was at summer camp. I still remember how beautiful it was, looking at the stars at night.
How beautiful Yosemite is. Oh and the Grand Canyon (but that wasn’t really a camping trip.)
And from Girl Scouts way earlier- goiey, melty marshmallows from the campfire.
Camp memories then and now- when I was 10 we slept in tents and tried to cook French toast on an open fire for Mother’s Day, with little success. Now camp includes bunk beds- bluegrass fiddle music- art- Knitting and more Knitting. Camp=very fond memories!!!
From the 60’s Church Camp: Quiet, fresh air and the lake…
I love camp! Singing camp songs, especially those with special hand motions, is a favorite memory along with special theme days. Once, I wrote the theme day in the wrong day on my planner and my campers and I were the only ones who showed up to breakfast wearing our clothes backwards.
Learning to rappel. I unexpectedly found out that it was a lot if fun & I was better at it than the boy who wanted to date me.
“Favorite” camp memory: the tent collapsing on top of me in a Texas “blue norther.”
My favorite camp memory is from 7th grade summer camp in Texas. They taught us to four-square dance do we could “meet a man” when we got older. So much, so wrong with that… but we had a blast hooking arms and throwing each other around. Too fun!
My favorite camp memory has to be learning how to join knitting strips, or any pieces for that matter, to each other as I knit from Rick Mondragon in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina at a Knitters camp. That was long before the Modern Daily ladies came up with their camp. I hate to sew knitted pieces together and this just eliminates that. We also had great food in Asheville!!
My favorite camp memory is as an adult, going to music camp, in a large urban city, staying in a great hotel, eating in wonderful new restaurants, and, after the camp was over for the day, coming upon, by chance, a fantastic yarn sale at the friendliest, nicest, well-stocked yarn shop. Music, yarn, food, travel–these are a few of my favorite things.
I loved the floating Sunday breakfast at Girl Scout camp. We had to paddle out to various boats on the lake in order to get our breakfast. Cereal was in one boat, juice in another, etc. It may have been a way for us to practice our skills, but the lake was beautiful and so peaceful.
I am another “never been to camp-Er”. I think there ought to be more adult camps. Sign me up, I would love it!
Snippets just about makes my day…I have had some nasty illness for over three weeks and Snippets is as good as a visit from a friend
Thanks
Kate
Swimming and making new friends
Favorite camp memory – having a mad crush on the sailing instructor and surviving having to be the only boat without adult supervision because I had sailed before… Executed perfect docking manoeuvre without revealing absolute terror… ⛵
Making s’mores around the campfire and catching the marshmallows on fire! Making my first crafty thing – a potholder for Mom – with that square blue metal frame and weaving the stretchy pieces of material in and out.
My favourite camp is KIDNEY KAMP – during the Kidney March – a 100 km fundraising walk for the Kidney Foundation of Canada. 3 days 100 km (about 62 miles for Americans) from Kananaskis Country in the Canadian Rockies to Calgary (site of the 1988 Olympics). I will try to knit this year as I walk, so as not to “waste” time! LOL! If you want to donate, please see – below. This will be my 7th year doing this walk! Kidneys Fail – WE WON’T!
I only went to Girl Scout camp once and had a great time, loved the campfire songs the best. Hating worrying about ticks! Still hate ticks.
Went to camp 5 summers. Worked at camps 3 years. The best part of everyone of them was swimming – in lakes or pools – I didn’t care. Loved being in the water!
I don’t really have good memories from camp. I only went to sleepaway camp once, and it was a weird religious camp run by my babysitter’s church. I’m committed to giving my kiddo better camp memories, even if he is too young for more than day camps at this point.
swimming to the dock! we had a dock anchored part way away from the beach and it was a million miles away but once you got there and climbed up and caught your breath it was all about jumping off! So much fun at camp. And it was the only place my nana would wear pants.
My favorite memory happened at camp as a grown old woman. I went glamping at Autopark in wine country with five dear friends this Spring. Making s’mores and drinking red wine around the fire was magical.We managed to knit a few rows during our stay amongst the redwoods.Magical…
My favourite time at camp was canoeing after it got dark and the loons were out on the lake.
Being fortunate enough to get into the Inaugural MDK getaway! Had a great time!
My favorite camp memory is river-rafting in the Great Smokies.
The peacocks screeching at Camp Gailor Maxon in Monteagle!
My favorite camp memory is picking up my daughter from camp. She was 8 and attended an all girl’s farm camp. The girls had a farm show. My daughter’s animal was a new born calf that was uncooperative. My husband had to carry the calf into the show ring. My daughter was so happy to be with the animals for 2 weeks.
Knitting camp must be awesome!! As a kid I used to love the late night Hide and Seek in the dark. Enjoy your weekend!
My favorite memory is staying up late, talking, and munching on snackies!
The frogs & the lightening bugs always fascinated me.
Swimming in the cedar lake, where the water stained your swimsuit red.
I only went to ‘camp’ once and my favorite time then, as well as all the time my family camped across the united states, was evening campfire and roasting marshmallows.
My favourite camp memory was going to Alagany State Park where our neighbors invited us for chocolate cupcakes that they had baked in half oranges skins (the insides had been used for fresh squeezed OJ)
Sitting and eating fire roasted hot dogs by the campfire, all warm and cozy in a sweatshirt, after swimming and playing all day.
My favorite camp memory is learning to make tiny woven friendship bracelets. And going home with wrists full of them! Also the sound of rain on the canvas tents.
One of my favorite memories is teaching my sister to knit at a quilting retreat several years ago…
I didn’t go to camp as a kid. But I was an adult piano student, beginning at age 38. My husband sent me to Sonata Piano Camp in Bennington VT (across the country for this west coaster) after reading Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures by Noah Adams in which he recounts going to this camp. It was a surprise to me for my 40th, and I had less than a month to prepare. I loved it so much I went for six more years!
i’m a city girl. have never camped in my life. i missed out on a lot, i know. lol
Did a lot of camping as a kid…but never went to camp. I do so love the smell of pine and campfires on a cool summer morning in the mountains; the best!!!
Working like crazy to climb all 9,735′ of Mt. Tallac, (above Emerald Bay and Lake Tahoe), to find a Swiss Grandma comfortably knitting away up on the summit. A solid knitter and clearly, a strong hiker.
Canoeing on a smooth-as-glass New Hampshire lake early in the morning, with the mist moving over the water. Pure heaven to a young girl growing up next to the New Jersey turnpike!!!
I only went to camp once, and it was with a school class so not really the same experience. I did enjoy the zipline, though.
I didn’t go to camp, but my early family vacations were camping. The best part was the stories (often spooky) told around the campfire at night.
Oh, camp! Girl Scout camp when I was in elementary school, 4-H camp in middle school, and band camp in high school. The latter was probably the best. In my last year, I was one of the students selected to perform in the honors concert one night, and was the last performer. I remember being backstage feeling nervous, and then deciding not to be. I told myself that I was chosen to do this because I was good, that no one else knew the piece I would be playing and therefore it was only a mistake if I showed it on my face. Otherwise, it’s ornamentation or interpretation. I played well, and have never had stage fright since.
Making lanyards and bracelets using “Gimp”!
My grandparents had a little summer cottage on a lake that they called “camp.” I fondly remember jumping off the dock again and again, and eating the Fig Newton cookies that my grandfather always had on hand because they were his (and my) favorite.
I most enjoyed canoeing and archery at 4-H camp back in the day!
My favorite camp memory? Ha, that’s a good one. I never went to camp so I don’t have one. So there. Way to make me feel left out. (Don’t worry. Just kidding,) But if I had gone to camp, I’m sure it would have been color wars. Do I still qualify for the giveaway???? 😉
Favorite camp memory of my childhood..our cabin being awakened just before dawn and led up an unknown trail to a clearing where doughnuts dangled on strings from tree branches. I don’t remember if we ate them handless or not, but the sight of that doughnut laden tree was magical.
Way too many great moments camping. My mom was Girl Scout who loved camping and she made sure when she was a Girl Scout leader that our troop did lots of camping, She even convinced my father to try camping as a way to afford traveling with four kids.. He discovered it was cheap and not like army camping. So there was day camp and when I was old enough two weeks of away from home camps. Going forward there were the four summers spent camping while my husband did field work for his degree in geology. Sadly we have done little camping lately. I feel like a traitor when we travel now and use a motel instead of camping but I don’t miss packing and unpacking a wet tent!
Making s’mores while camping is always my favorite!
The peace and quiet of the woods. That is the best thing in the world!!
The “long” hike through the woods (maybe a quarter mile) to get to the swimming spot in the river. Cooling off in that river was the best part of the day.
As a girls camp leader for several years I incorporate knitting somehow every time I go to Bucks Lake, California… And my favorite is how the girls love to hang out in my tent-gazebo-screened-porch that I made a sign for and called the “yarn yurt.” I bring buckets of yarn and show them how to really have fun at camp!
Ive never been to a knitting camp, but at age 12 I did teach a “learn to knit” session at Girl Scout Camp over 40 years ago! Only two girls showed up, but I had a blast sharing what my Nana had taught me. 🙂
Wish I had been to a camp. As a child who immigrated with v protective, controlling, and urban parents, they could not imagine something they would less allow. As a result, my own children have a ton of camp experiences.
Did a lot of outdoor camping as an Explorer scout, and backpacking trips as an adult. Love the fresh air and quiet trails while hiking and of course sitting around the campfire at night!
Squam Lake Knitting Camp…. an incredible experience!
Fave camp memory is from
My childhood— at girl scout camp in Alaska. There was a big saltwater tide flat and one sunny day we all went “mudsliding” on the muddy tideflats (tide was out). We slid and slided and played, then washed our muddy clothes and ourselves off in the ocean. It was glorious!
Every summer when I was in high school, we camped in northern Wisconsin. At night we’d make pudgy pies and then settle in for shooting star gazing. There’s nothing like cast-iron hand pies cooked over a campfire. They just might rival s’mores.
Decorating cabins at women’s retreat
Movie night… 🙂
Sigh. So glad you’re living the dream out there in Sewanee. Wish I was there.
I didn’t go to camp much. My mom sent me to a day camp one week and i was so so shy i begged to stay home.
Jr High church camp in South Louisiana. Spanish moss, snakes, and chiggers, which we treated with OJs Beauty Lotion.
I never went to sleep away camp!
My favorite “camp” memory was “Shakrag” in Swanee. Spinning, dying, and knitting.
I’ve never been to a knitting camp, but it would be such a dream!
Like a few commenters, I’ve never been to camp proper, but I did go camping with my dad and stepmom a few summers when I was a kid. They had popup camper, so it wasn’t as rustic as tent camping – which is a good thing, I was a persnickety child! I also wasn’t a very outdoorsy child, so my favorite memories of those times were sitting at the campsite reading!
I remember the excitement of camp “mail call” and the joy of getting handwritten updates from friends and family while I was away. I can still see my grandmother’s elegant cursive on her blue onionskin stationary. I miss the art of letter-writing.
One of my favorite camping memories (I didn’t go to “camp” as a kid, but I frequently went camping with family) was the time my dad and I slept without a tent out under the stars. It was extremely chilly that night, and there was an amazing meteor shower. I lay happily awake, freezing cold, watching the light show – until a noise caught my attention. Turned on my flashlight and what to my wondering eyes should appear but two skunks digging in to our inadequately sealed bin of food on the ground ten feet away. I awoke my dad and we watched the skunks eat all the food we had for our following day’s hike back home. Hilarious situation, and the skunks WERE kind of cute.
Band camp was always the best!
Does Absolutely Worst Camp Memory count for the giveaway? I went off to Girl Scout camp with my three BFF’s. The four of us had always done everything together–grade school, Brownies, the works. But their birthdays were all in June, while mine was in December. That meant that we were separated when we got to camp. Not just the next campsite over, either.
They were twelve, so they got to be on the entire other side of the lake, while I was stuck with the Little Kids. I was so lonely. Come to find out, 50+ years later, that they were terribly mean to the other girl in their cabin, because she wasn’t me. I felt bad for that other girl, but was glad to know my friends missed me.
Thanks for the giveaway, and for all you do for the MDK community!
my favorite camp memory is singing songs for everything when I was a volunteer counselor at MDA summer camp
Climbing pine trees at camp and sitting way up top being rocked by the gentle wind
I loved being outdoors in the fresh air, sunshine, and trees. Hiking, swimming, projects, it was all the most fun!
As a kid our family went camping every summer, but the most favorite memory has got to be the time when I was about 8 and a boy rode by on his bike and said “hello beautiful”……he must have been all of 9 or 10. I was floating the rest of the day, but my two older brothers who were with me never let me hear the end of it!
Hobo pies, pie maker lined with white bread, add sweet (usually pie filling or pudding) and toast over a camp fire
Being a camp counselor, and away from home all summer!
My favorite camp memory is learning how to build a fire. I was amazed that rubbing two sticks together could actually create a spark. It was a real wow moment.
Loved 4-H camp with the nightly campfire and singing !!
being chosen as a wee woodsman on the second day of camp – never forgot the thrill of being noticed
My favorite camp memory was one occasion where we got to ride on driftwood as the tide came in – totally irresponsible on the part of our counselors, but it was AWESOME!
The first and only time I went to camp I was a teenager and had to take a french class in summer because I flunked it at school. But we did have an amazing time with all the other craft related classes and activities, however, no knitting involved. Luckily I already knew how to knit.
My favorite camp memory is when we would sing all the songs together as a group. I still remember a lot of the cheesy lyrics and find myself humming them today!
S’mores and silly songs.
I, too, have never been to a knitting camp…it sounds like so much fun!
Roasting marshmallows over an open fire. Thank you for the giveaway.
Oh dear! I have no memories! Never attended camp as a kid because we lived in a teeny tiny town the middle of nowhere New York State. Now living in a slightly bigger town – with no LYS for miles – in SC. Rhinebeck is on my bucket list.
I have a gift of having a camp in Canada – Windrush where I spent every summer growing up and now once a week each summer. The memories are to numerous to list – partying and falling into boat and breaking foot _ parents still think I slipped dock! Falling asleep in the hammock, SMores on the island , playing with my nieces. However, I would love a new experience of a camp getaway! Its been a hard year so far – death of husbands best friend 1 month ago, (godparents to daughter Emma) job loss –overall just YUCKY. But knitting has gotten me through even in Singapore where first funeral was held. I visited 3 Yarn stores in the 2 days I was there. I love making projects for others – Emma wanted dress for 2nd service back in USA and that gave me great pleasure knitting that for her.
I’ve never been to camp!!! But I did spend two summers traveling from flea mkt to flea market as a teen. Does that count?
A few years ago, my entire family borrow the church camp and spent a long weekend disconnected from the internet. 26 of us just being together, so much fun!