So August was great for another reason - Stitches Midwest. A friend of mine hosted a weekend up at her cabin for the knitting gang. I did not go, I had volunteered for Halos of Hope & I had paid for events & a class at Stitches. So a handful of knitting friends went up to the cabin, but a good group of them were in Schaumburg IL for Stitches Midwest. I went to the Market Preview on Thursday, which was a nice way to shop. They open the market place a day early for students. Shop in a quieter environment. I would say if you are looking to shop with ease, Thursday or Sunday afternoon is the way to go.
Thursday was good shopping, I did 75% of my shopping then, buying sock yarn in pairs, some Lorna's Laces Solemate, Socks that Rock Lightweight and Holiday Yarns. All different and amazing. :-D I met up with a knitting group friend who had a class and didn't go up to the cabin for dinner. We ate in the hotel and dang - tasty and reasonably prices. We talked about a bunch of stuff & she introduced me to the Knitting Pipeline and Paula was at Stitches! I found a new podcast. I love her voice & she's so nice. Listen to her if you've got room on the mp3 player!
Friday I popped in to drop off my raffle ticket for Fri & see if I could find my knitting gang/Stephen West. BTW - one of them is stalking him. Anyway - It was crowded and parking was bad, so I didn't look - just walked out again & grabbed bite to eat. Then back to work. I came back to the hotel in the evening for the PJ party. I hung out with the Halos of Hope Prez and the gang from Fuzzy Wuzzy and sat with the family of Cascade Yarns! Shannon is so sweet, her mom and grandma were so nice. I had so much fun with the knitting gals. The PJ contest involved animal calls. I should have done better. :-D Next year I'm making some slippers too :)
On Saturday I came in early to meet up with Ms. Knitting Adventures and visit Halos again and shop a little. My shopping technique really was to shop stuff the drew me in. I would not enter every booth and examine every object, but be selective. It worked well, but I do wish I had gotten a drop spindle. I hung out until it was class time and then I went to my Design Your Own Triangle Shawl with Brooke Nico. Brooke is a great, high energy, enthusiastic, make it work kind of teacher. She was great. A few people sitting next to me got up and left, as though designing is easy. It is not. I walked out of the class with tons of ideas and nothing on my needles. I wanted to sit down with my compy immediately and start playing in excel/knitting software. Yup, I got that last year after stitches. I haven't used it much, but I love it. I like excel, as a math nerd, but it has limitations.
I then shopped a little before the Saturday Night Student Banquet & Fashion Show. I sat with Lily Chin & she told me she thought my Stephen West KAL shawl was classy. :-D I was glowing, she's so talented and wonderful. My table was nice and talkative and fun. The fashion show was great, such talent. But I swear the women who won the prizes for the fashion show this year, won them last year too. Big colorful shawls and sweaters seem to win. Maybe Rick's predictable. Totally not my thing, but I loved all the ideas and pride that everyone showed.
My Saturday haul was 2 pairs of free socks and packer sock yarn and a Lucy Neatby Sock DVD. <3 Sunday was my volunteer day at the Halos of Hope Booth. We talked about Shark Hats, gave away free hat patterns and took pictures of the Fuzzy Wuzzy mascot at Stitches events & booths. :-D Then I stuck around for the cash drawing - which I did not win, but a Fuzzy Wuzzy gang member did! Excellent! Then I went to the Ms Babs booth and took a skein home. Yeah :-D She does amazing things with color. My Stitches Haul:
Haven't worked with any of it yet. What would you work with first?
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