I’m finally pulling myself out of an extremely busy time at work, which kind of resulted in a tepid reaction to considering writing a blog post. That being said, Stitches was weeks ago, but here is my recap.
I took Friday February 27 off because that’s how I roll. I have plenty of vacation time saved up (I’m finally on the higher vacation accrual rate – to date I have over 60 hours, yay!) so taking a day to carouse at the Santa Clara convention center is easy. Last year, I even took it unpaid, that’s how worth it it is.
Anyway, so my mom, aunt Melissa, and I headed out there first thing and this year the parking was not a total nightmare like it was last year, and we headed inside, only to be stuck in line buying tickets for an HOUR. I don’t know if it was the Stitches people or the convention center people who were responsible for the absolutely ridiculous wait, but I want it noted that it was terribly unorganized, and really quite appalling.
But, we finally made it inside and immediately headed over to the far end of the hall and started looking around. I made my first purchase of the day fairly soon, a ball of bamboo-blend self-striping sock yarn, a brand that I’d never heard of before.
From there on, it was pretty much all downhill. Well, in terms of not buying pink or green sock yarn, that is! I had two specific goals for this year’s Stitches, which were 1) find some worsted weight yarn in a periwinkle color and 2) stay away from pink and green sock yarns, since I have the most of those colors already stashed away.
I succeeded on the periwinkle front almost right away at the Imagiknit booth. Imagiknit is a yarn store in San Francisco that I have never gone to because I hate both parking in San Francisco and San Francisco itself and it’s located in an area that is hard to park in. Yes, I am biased against the great city by the bay, whatevs. I drive a stick! Not exactly conducive to easy driving on all those hills. Plus, Imagiknit is not near Bart – you’d have to walk like a mile through the Mission, which is kind of a dodgy neighborhood, IMO.
But again, biased against SF so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.
Back to Imagiknit – so, I’ve never been to the store, but I do enjoy their booth. Last year I got some Colinette Jitterbug from them; that was the first time I’d even seen Jitterbug. And this year they were the only place at Stitches that had reasonable periwinkle yarn – not the easiest color to come by, plus it was Malabrigo, and we all know I heart the Malabrigo. (I am not a periwinkle girl myself – it’s too close to lavender, my least favorite color ever – but this is a nice color, plus it’s for a co-worker who commissioned a hat from me. She LOVED the color when I showed it to her, so mission accomplished.)
I was then taken by the Miss Babs booth, which was pretty much all delightful sock yarn dyed in the most delicious of colors. I promptly broke the pink/green rule.
Webs had off-color lots of Araucania Multy, which I really like, for only $9, so I scored some of that.
While in the interminable line to get in, we decided to get 2-day passes and so my mom and I went back on Saturday. The very first booth we stopped at (where I was breaking my sock-yarn-skein-not-to-exceed-$25 rule) I ran into Jennifer! So that was pretty cool.
ANYWAY, here is what I bought:
Basically, I talked to a lot of really cool people and got some great yarn, and some great patterns (two Cookie A patterns I didn’t have, a Knitspot pattern, and another other pattern I scored directly from the designer at the Verb for Keeping Warm booth).
After Stitches on Saturday, my mom and I went to the San Jose Kinokinuya bookstore where I wasn’t going to get anything BUT they totally had two Japanese stitch dictionaries that I don’t have!
Jerks.
And that is Stitches.
Next up, current projects status and my trip to the Filoli Gardens.
But, seriously, that pink sock is getting pretty close to being done. I hope to get it mostly done tonight, while watching my Monday night television (Big Bang Theory, anyone?). I also finished one of Abby’s Monkey socks, but I haven’t started the second one yet – once I finish the Heart’s Afire socks I will cast on the second Monkey. Doesn’t that yarn knit up nice in the Monkey pattern, though? I think it’s Perchance to Knit in Navy Rainbow or something. The pink is Araucania Ranco Multy, which I REALLY like. 
