What if making could be more than productivity—what if it could be presence?
Join us for a virtual retreat designed for knitters, crocheters, and fiber artists who want to deepen their relationship with their craft. You'll explore how mindfulness and making naturally intertwine, transforming your stitching from autopilot to awareness.
With knitwear designer and yoga instructor Fiona Ellis, author Liza Laird, and movement specialist Marcie Leek, this retreat blends hands-on making, gentle movement, guided meditation, and creative exploration.
Learn meditative stitch patterns, embellish with intention, care for your maker's body through yoga, and build sustainable mindfulness habits.
This isn't about perfecting techniques or racing to finish projects—it's about slowing down, paying attention, and rediscovering the joy that brought you to making in the first place.
Come as you are. Stitch with awareness. Leave with tools for a more conscious, connected creative practice. All levels welcome.
As you make magic for others this holiday season, don't forget to top off your own cup. Join this special Virtual Mindful Maker Retreat to recharge your batteries and prepare with intention for 2026.
Friday, jan 9, 7pm eastern
KEYNOTE:
WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?
with Melanie Falick
Join us on Friday evening as Melanie Falick opens the weekend with a thoughtful, grounding conversation to help us arrive—together. This opening session sets the tone for the reflection, learning, creativity, and mindfulness we’ll explore on Saturday.
Melanie will invite us to pause and consider why we’re drawn to knitting, crochet, and other forms of handwork in the first place. Where do those impulses come from? What do they give us—beyond the finished object? And how can the skills, values, and perspectives we carry as makers support our own well-being, strengthen our communities, and gently ripple out into the wider world?
Come as you are, with your curiosity, your questions, and your hands ready—to make stitches as well as love, connection, peace, and time.
Melanie Falick is an independent writer, editor, and creative consultant—and a lifelong maker. She is the author of several bestselling books, with over 525,000 books in print. She is the former publishing director of STC Craft/Melanie Falick Books, an imprint of Abrams, where she published books by many esteemed authors, including Kaffe Fassett, Norah Gaughan, Clara Parkes, and Tracey Ullman. She is also a former editor-in-chief of Interweave Knits magazine.
saturday, jan 10 9AM EASTERN
MORNING FUEL
with Marilyn Woodruff
In this quick 15-minute kitchen session, you'll discover how to make a simple, nourishing smoothie that actually fits into your morning routine, blending together easy-to-find ingredients that taste good and leave you feeling energized with no fancy equipment or elaborate prep required!
You'll learn what to keep on hand, how to adjust flavors to your taste, and tricks for making this an effortless habit rather than another chore. This is real-world morning fuel: quick, satisfying, and kind to your body, mind, and schedule.
Perfect for busy makers who want to take better care of themselves without overthinking it.
saturday, jan 10 9:15AM EASTERN
MEDITATION IN MOTION: THE SENSATIONS OF KNITTING
with Fiona Ellis
You've knitted a thousand stitches, but have you truly felt them?
Fiona Ellis leads a short, 15-minute guided meditation that brings your full awareness to the sensations of knitting. This isn't about learning new skills—it's about experiencing what you already know with fresh attention.
Explore a simple practice of presence through your beloved craft.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 9:30AM EASTERN
OBSERVING & AWARENESS: MINDFUL KNITTING
with Fiona Ellis
What if each stitch could be a tiny act of meditation?
Fiona Ellis blends her expertise as a knitwear designer and yoga instructor to guide you into a deeper, more conscious relationship with your craft. Through simple mindfulness exercises using basic stitches, you'll learn to bring the focused attention of meditation practice to each loop and movement.
This session invites you to truly feel your knitting or crocheting: the texture of yarn, the rhythm of needles, the quiet satisfaction of stitches forming beneath your fingers. By tuning into both the sensory experience and the mechanics of your hands at work, you'll discover how knitting and crocheting can naturally become a gateway to calm and presence.
No complicated patterns, no rushing, just the invitation to slow down, pay attention, and find the meditation that's been hiding in your needles and hooks all along.
All levels welcome. Bring your hands, your yarn, and your curiosity.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 11:30AM EASTERN
GENTLE MOVEMENT FOR MAKERS: AN INTRODUCTION TO CHAIR YOGA
with Liza Laird
Liza Laird, author of Yoga of Yarn: A Knitter’s Handbook for Self-Discovery, will lead us in a gentle 15-minute chair yoga session. No prior yoga experience is necessary.
All you need is a body, a chair, and a sincere willingness to care for yourself and try new things that will help you stitch with greater ease.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 11:45AM EASTERN
SIMPLE STITCHES, QUIET MINDS: A MINDFUL SCARF PROJECT
with Melissa Leapman
The best patterns for finding calm? The ones you don't have to think too hard about.
In this session, Melissa Leapman will share two beautifully uncomplicated stitch patterns, one knitted and one crocheted, each with an easy-to-memorize, one-row repeat that lets your hands find their rhythm while your mind finds its calm.
These stitches are perfect for building a mindfulness practice through craft: simple enough to become second nature, interesting enough to hold your gentle attention, and just the thing for creating a cozy, warm, reversible scarf.
As you work, the repetitive motion becomes meditative. There’s no need to constantly check a pattern or count (and re-count) complicated sequences. Just settle into the soothing cadence of your stitches and let the tension of the day unravel along with your yarn.
All you need to bring is your willingness to slow down, stitch by stitch.
Optional Kit Available: Treat yourself to a curated kit featuring soft, airy yarn in a gorgeous colorway, perfectly chosen for this project. Kits must be ordered by December 31 to arrive in time for the session.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 1:30PM EASTERN
FOCUS ON EMBROIDERY: EMBELLISHING WITH INTENTION with Fiona Ellis
There's something deeply satisfying about transforming a simple knitted or crocheted piece into something unmistakably yours.
In this session, Fiona Ellis shows how embroidery can add character, texture, and personal meaning to your knitting. Through technical instruction and creative play, you'll learn how a few thoughtful stitches—whimsical details, tone-on-tone texture, or sophisticated accents—can make an ordinary garment truly special.
She’ll share chain stitch, blanket stitch, spider webs, bullion knots, and the all-essential duplicate stitch.
The focused, repetitive nature of embroidery invites presence, while the creative possibilities will keep your mind engaged and curious.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 3:30PM EASTERN
BODY & MIND FOR MAKERS
with Marcie Leek
Your hands have been busy creating—now it's time to care for the rest of the body that makes it all possible.
Join Marcie Leek (@knottedknittersyoga) for a session that begins with understanding how all that sitting and stitching affects your body and brain. Marcie shares the science behind what happens when we're absorbed in our craft, helping you recognize physical patterns you might not even notice.
Then comes movement. Marcie will guide you through a gentle but complete chair and standing yoga practice tailored for makers: stretches to ease tight shoulders and wrists, poses to open your chest and neck, and breathwork to bring you back to balance.
This is yoga created with crafters in mind—accessible, restorative, and rooted in understanding the unique relationship between making and movement.
All bodies and experience levels welcome. Come ready to stretch, breathe, and show yourself some kindness.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 6PM EASTERN
JUMPSTART YOUR CREATIVITY with Fiona Ellis
Ever feel like your creative spark has gone quiet—or wonder how to coax it back to life?
Designer Fiona Ellis has made a deep study of the creative process, not just in theory, but through years of experimenting with ways to awaken her own creativity when it goes dormant. In this session, she shares the methods that actually work: practical approaches you can use whenever you need to reconnect with your creative spark.
You won't just listen; you'll participate. Fiona will guide you through an exercise to explore on your own after the workshop and will offer ongoing tips for nurturing creativity as a sustainable practice rather than waiting for lightning to strike.
Whether you're navigating a creative block, wanting to establish better creative habits, or simply curious about how to invite more inspiration into your making, this session offers both insight and actionable tools.
Come ready to discover new pathways to your own creative energy.
SATURDAY, JAN 10 7pM EASTERN
SATURDAY, JAN 10 7pM EASTERN
BUILDING A POSITIVE PRACTICE: A CLOSING MEDITATION
with Fiona Ellis
As our Mindful Maker Retreat draws to a close, dear Fiona Ellis offers a guided meditation to help you build a positive, sustainable mindfulness practice that can travel with you beyond this gathering.
This isn't goodbye to what we've shared. It's an invitation to continue. Fiona will guide you in setting gentle intentions, cultivating self-compassion, and discovering how to weave mindfulness into your everyday making and living. Whether you're new to meditation or deepening an existing practice, this short session will help you create a foundation that feels supportive rather than demanding, joyful rather than obligatory.
It's a peaceful way to honor the time we've spent together and prepare for the journey ahead one stitch, one breath, one mindful moment at a time.