Stitches West

I went to Stitches on Friday. Originally, I wanted to be there when the market opened, but due to a change in plans, ended up getting there around 1:30pm. In a way, I'm glad that I went later, because I heard that it was a zoo in the morning and so crowded at the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth that you couldn't even get in. One of my goals was to buy some STR, but the pickins were pretty slim bythe time I got there. The best bet was to buy one of their Fair Isle "kits" which had 2 skeins of STR in nice bright colors. Here's a picture of my yarn haul on Friday:

My daughter wanted to go to Stitches too, so the two of us went on Sunday afternoon (I figured that Saturday would be way too crazy!). She was actually more excited about the Japanese fabric booth I found on Friday. We spent a couple of hours (with only minimal whining, are you done yet?) going up and down the aisles. The highlight was learning to spin at the Serendipity Spinners booth. They rigged up a drop spindle using a CD and dowel. Here's R's first spool of spun fiber:

I so want a spinning wheel! I think I might just look for a nice drop spindle so I can spin small amounts of yarn to include in my projects. I don't really need yet another hobby!

I also bought a couple of shawl pins (one glass, one wood), a few patterns and a pair of sock blockers from Blue Moon. I really wanted to find a nice messenger bag for my knitting projects, but was disappointed to find very few bags being sold.