Becca's Blog

The Stitches West haul.

Finally, here's the roundup, roughly in order of acquisition:
Mission Falls Simple pattern book

and SWTC Karaoke soy wool (nine skeins! half-price!) from Full Thread Ahead. I think this is going to be a cardigan of some kind. And I must stop buying greige yarn now.

I felt like I was really going overboard at the Hemp for Knitting booth, but spent all of $22, on three patterns

and one swatching ball of Hempwol.

I should have bought more.  They had a sample in the booth of a very pretty cardigan in the Hempwol, so it's on my wish list.

At the Yarn Barn of Kansas booth I bought a set of 5-inch size 7 dpns, for knitting the thumb of my Maine Morning Mitts on the train home. Of course I didn't get that far, but they did come in handy while I was finishing them.

And I bought a silly gadget that I've always been curious about. (Just $4! No shipping! I'd be stupid not to!)

(I just learned that this is called a teleidoscope.) You can get them from KnitPicks, among other places.

I was fine while browsing through the Habu booth, and Webs, and that alpaca superstore behind the Webs booth, but as it grew late and I got a bit tired, my resistance wore thin, and I found myself at the Brooks Farm booth.

I have to say this was quite tangly while I wound it, but it sure feels nice to handle. It will be interesting to knit up.

OK, I get it now.

I understand what the big deal is about Stitches. It's a massive yarn crawl in one building. You get to be with your people, and see in person (and touch) products that otherwise might only be available to you online. So it's a huge shopping buzz combined with rubbing elbows with similarly yarn-obsessed folks. I had a great time and I did a little damage, purchase-wise.

Here are the knitting buddies I saw at the marketplace on Saturday:

• Petra, my Temescal bag teacher from Knit-One-One
• Maia of Tactile Fibers
• Feralknitter Janine
• Angelina from Ravelry, whom I got to know at our newly formed East Bay LGBT knit night.
• Christina in her booth but she was busy with customers, so I didn't go say hello.
• Jocelyn at the Nine Rubies booth
• Hollis at the Full Thread Ahead booth (and her delightful family)
• Nathania and Elinor at the Purlescence booth

Here are the knitting luminaries I gushed at:

• Cheryl Oberle
• Jess and Casey of Ravelry

Here is what I drooled over but didn't buy:

• Shelridge Farm kits, for hats and sweaters
• Blue Moon Fiber Arts worsted
• A sweater's worth of Hemp for Knitting
• California cashmere
• silk-blend laceweight everywhere, but especially at the Redfish Dyeworks booth
• Habu everything
• Alpaca everywhere

Here's what I missed:

• Stopping in Lisa Souza's booth (d'oh!)
• Seeing Wondermike at the Article Pract booth
• Seeing Yarnagogo Rachael, who must have been there at the same time.
• Seeing Stash and Burn Nicole and Jenny, whom I totally would have gushed over.

Here's what I did:

• Took a one-hour marketplace class on buttonholes with Beth Whitesell, which was a good review, but what I really need is the "buttonholes 201" class. This was not $35 worth of instruction, in my book. And if the regular sessions are subsidized by the revenue generated by the marketplace, I think they should be relatively cheap, not as wickedly expensive as they are.
  
• Filled out my Ravelry passport, which took me into booths that I wouldn't have otherwise set foot in. I don't know where the the Ravelry folks came up with the idea, but it was a brilliant one, from both marketing and customer perspectives.
• Chatted with the folks selling the Fiber Spheres, because I was very curious about their development process. Also curious about who bought them. I saw people leaving with them, a bit to my surprise. I saw just one person carrying that stylish but very expensive rucksack-style project tote/purse.
• Took the Amtrak train from Berkeley to Santa Clara and back (not the Stitch and Ride special, just the regularly scheduled Capitol Corridor train), which was the perfect way to get there. No driving stress and extra knitting time--and knitters to chat with, including a chance meeting with an old acquaintance. One of those "small world" moments...

I will save my little haul for a post tomorrow, with photos. Must go to work now, sigh.

Another thought about stash, this one selfish.

While I was winding some of the Brooks Farm Acero I snarfed up at Stitches West (a full Stitches post is percolating in my brain, and maybe I'll finish it tonight), I had a second, less morbid but no prettier thought about my stash. I thought: If I give in to temptation and cast on for the scarves that this yarn deserves to be, it would be kind of like marking my territory. Then it couldn't be given away in the event of my untimely retirement from knitting--it would be mine forever.

So big-hearted of me...