Yippee Skippy! (php)

Stitches was fun! I love to shop and shopping in a massive market of pretty much only the things I am interested in with a large budget specified for shopping with is just stupendous. I did a MUCH better job this year of budgeting my money as I went through. Last year I spent my entire budget by the time I was only halfway through and had to ATM the rest of the way through. This year I came with almost the same budget and came home with money left over! Although I have to admit that I have called my friend Teenuh who is working there today at the fabulous Fiber Fiend booth to ask her to buy a book for me that I am having non-buyer's remorse over. Hopefully she can get it for me. Stupid me and the out of print books! And as Teenuh said, it was quite a bit more fun this year seeing other knitters she and I knew
and shopping with a larger gang in tow.

Thursday night at Stitches was loads of fun, starting with the Ravelry meetup. There were many Ravelers there and I have to confess that I was surprised with the number of "older" knitters that were there (people older than my parents qualify as older - so over 60) as I sort of lamely assumed that they were not strongly represented on the internet. My mistake, I stand corrected! Baby Boomers are representing! Perhaps it is only my own mother and the mother's of my friends who struggle with the internet, all the rest seem to be doing well. After the meet up and some on-stage humiliation with my Pretty as a Peacock shawl, we were "snuck" into the Market Place preview for free. We got our super awesome Ravelry Passport books, which were SO snazzy and cute and well done! I picked up the Knitter's Block from Article Pract (something I had non-buyer's remorse over not buying at TKGA in Oakland last fall).
At Commuknity's booth I purchased 2 skeins of Malabrigo lace weight (exactly) similar to the KnitandRun's tasty yarn that I was coveting. I also bought all of the heavy things that I didn't want to carry all day long the next day or was afraid were going to be gone. This is the Fibersphere which will work nicely when ball winding or using a ball of yarn that tries to escape (like Kauni for example). It is nifty because when you open the container, the feed hole opens too, so you don't need to pull all of your yarn back through the hole if you frog or cut the yarn if you want to swap out your take-a-long project mid-project.I also got these 2 German lace books Kunst-stricken I and II, purchased at Village Spinning and Weaving. An expensive place to buy books but a place that always has a hard to find book or imported books if you are looking for one. Then we found the free sample row. FREE 10 g balls of Malabrigo laceweight! Cripes, that is like 1/5 of a skein, almost 100 yds! I got a spiffy red one. Also to be got- a 10g sample of Cherry Tree Hill sock!

So you KNOW that was the first place we went on Friday morning. I got another red Malabrigo and my super smart mom grabbed the same color and gave me hers! We worked on getting the rest of our passport stamped and shopped quite a bit and got another freebie at Bella Knitting, a small bottle of Wool Wash!

Here is the rest of my stash enhancement. I guess this year I was kind of into buying kits:

Strickwear Kit in Purple Passion: (Purchased to learn the varied strand technique to be used again in the future with my nifty silk from Redfish)

Mister Ben Kit from Black Water Abbey Farms: Featuring the Mister Ben pattern by Two Old Bags.

The Maple Leaf Shawl Kit from Just Our Yarn (who were so accommodating and let me switch the kids around):

Then some loose balls of yarn:
Noro sock from The Yarn Place (Capitola):


Pagewood Farm Hand Dyed Sock Chugiak in Harvest from Great Yarns:

I also did some fiber enhancement:

A sampler of colors from Carolina Homespun 4oz of Silk hankies from I think maybe the Oak Grove Studio Booth, but I am not sure. Two 40z hanks of 100% bamboo fiber in Sunset colorway from Fiber Fiend.Then I did a little tool enhancement, just a needle sizer and some needle caps.

I returned to the Ravelry booth and delivered my filled in passport directly to Mr. Ravelry himself Casey (who was wearing a humorous "Bobfather" shirt), then dragged my tired butt home.

So, to anyone curious on the "Bag of lies" rectification front, just before we left the show Deanna of Deanna's Vintage Designs was there and I talked to her about my 120 yds of yarn (instead of 185). She said it was an Interlacements Yarn problem and talked to them. The Interlacements Yarn people were gracious enough to give me an entire skein of 345 yds of the very same yarn! They were so very kind. Whoo. Finally reached the end! I swear the next post won't be so long...