This year’s Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat was a good retreat. In fact it may have been the best one yet.

A Good Retreat Starts With Pre-Comers

The official kick-off of the Men’s Knitting Retreats at Easton Mountain is at the welcome reception on Thursdays at 5:00 PM. But since there is nothing else going on at Easton earlier in the week of our retreats, they let us sell extra/early days. Guys can arrive as early as Monday afternoon to enjoy a few days of unstructured relaxation at Easton Mountain.

Someone called this group of 22 guys “the pre-comers” and I can never call us anything else.

We are housed and fed and have free range of the retreat venue.

About half the guys usually arrive on Monday for a full week with each other. Mine starts off with picking up Brady and Bob near Albany airport and then meeting up with Doug for mani-pedis and lunch.

I actually got color on my nails. Can you guess which is mine? After lunch we head to Easton Mountain for the obligatory “I have arrived” photo in front of the Easton Mountain sign.

These first few days allow Derek and I to leisurely set up and prepare for the start of the retreat.

If you’ve been reading QueerJoe for years, you’ll know I write this every time. But this was a stellar group of guys this year. Even the guys who were new to the retreat were quite extraordinary. I couldn’t have built a better group myself.

Note on September Retreat: For those considering going to the Northeast Men’s Fall Fiber Retreat at Easton Mountain, (or know someone who is) there are only 3 spots remaining – https://mensknittingretreat.com/2026-northeast-mens-fall-knitting-retreat-registration/

Current Crochet

People really seemed to like the hats I made using Tony’s pattern for the Thermal Ponytail Beanie. So I started a new one.

It will eventually be a four-segment hat. The beginning is quite fiddly, but soon it will be relatively smooth and quick crocheting.