K's Stitches-in-Review

My chronological (as I remember it -- it's kind of a blur) journey through Stitches West 2006. I'll try to skip the stuff that Cookie already talked about.

Thursday night, I made a last minute decision to head over to Stitches instead of going to my regular knitting night. Cookie talked me into it because I was so jealous that she was already there all day. While I was still driving over from work in Berkeley, Cookie called me to ask me if I wanted Socks that Rock in lightweight, because they were almost out. She got me this one:

The colorway is "Panzanite".

Then, we headed to our perennial favorite, Shelridge Farms to eye the sock yarn and see what kits Buffy was offering this year. I bought two skeins of sock yarn:

I also eyed the Venice sweater pattern which Buffy was wearing (pic from her website):

I decided to hold off on the sweater, thinking of it as my possible one big purchase for the show.

We looked around a bit more, went back to the booth, and then I had to run off, knowing I would be back bright and early on Saturday.

On Saturday, the big highlight was of course seeing Lew and Gene (see Cookie's last few entries) and the rest of the Lacy Knitters Guild gang. But, I also got some more shopping in. At some point, Amanda from Spin Off (an Interweave mag) stopped Cookie in the aisle to say she recognized her from her sweater (Delph), and proceeded to teach me how to use a drop spindle. She even gave me a drop spindle, which of course meant I had to go buy some pretty roving from Carolina Homespun:

Abigail stopped by with Stefan, and we walked around a bit. We went over to Commuknity's booth to say hello to Emy and Nathania, who were playing with silk hankies from Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks (also profiled in Knitty). So of course, Abigail and I went to look those over, she got some, and I went back Sunday and got the Juniper colorway:

Also on Saturday, we went and watched that demo by Lew and Gene of lace knitting techniques, but our faithful readers have already heard much of that.

Sunday was *sniff* the final day of Stitches. Congrats again to Janice for winning the door prize! I picked up my final few purchases, the silk hankies, the Shelridge Farm kit I'd been wanting, and a pattern and yarn for a baby sweater for Tess' Designer Yarns:

All in all, most successful, but I sure was sad when it was all over!