{"id":112,"date":"2009-03-19T13:26:59","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T20:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melissaruth.com\/blog\/?p=112"},"modified":"2010-06-24T13:22:10","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T20:22:10","slug":"long-overdue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/melissaruth.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/long-overdue\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Overdue"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 That being said, Stitches was weeks ago, but here is my recap.<\/p>\n

I took Friday February 27 off because that’s how I roll.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Last year, I even took it unpaid, that’s how worth it it is.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But, we finally made it inside and immediately headed over to the far end of the hall and started looking around.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I succeeded on the periwinkle front almost right away at the Imagiknit booth.\u00a0 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\u00a0and it’s located in an area that is hard to park in.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

But again, biased against SF so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back to Imagiknit – so, I’ve never been to the store, but I do enjoy their booth.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (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.\u00a0 She LOVED the color when I showed it to her, so mission accomplished.)<\/p>\n

I was then taken by the Miss Babs booth, which was pretty much all delightful sock yarn dyed in the most delicious of colors.\u00a0 I promptly broke the pink\/green rule.<\/p>\n

Webs had off-color lots of Araucania Multy, which I really like, for only $9, so I scored some of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The very first booth we stopped at (where I was breaking my sock-yarn-skein-not-to-exceed-$25 rule) I ran into Jennifer<\/a>! So that was pretty cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANYWAY, here is what I bought:<\/p>\n

\"DSC02462\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

\"DSC02467\"<\/a> \"DSC02466\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

Jerks.<\/p>\n

\"DSC02469\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And that is Stitches.<\/p>\n

Next up, current projects status and my trip to the Filoli Gardens.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n