Knit One, Purr Too

Stitches West 2005

This morning I got up bright and early, picked up my friend, and we drove the several hours down to Santa Clara for Stitches West. One of these years I fully intend to make an entire day of it, and sign up for classes, but for now, it's all about the yarn.

Just like last year, there were a ton of people in line waiting to get into the vendor's mall, and oh, it was worth the wait. I'm not sure quite how many vendors there were, just that there were a lot.

We started on one end of the hall and worked our way toward the other side, fingering yarn here, flipping through books there, eying patterns and needles and accessories with every step. So many gorgeous yarns to choose from! So many wonderful things I wanted to bring home.

It was so very hard to keep that self restraint. I did pretty well until about midway through, when we hit the booth for Tess Designer Yarns. Those of you who've poked around in my archives might remember my Seabreeze sweater, which I made out of some absolutely gorgeous superwash merino I bought from Tess Designer Yarns at last year's Stitches West. The minute I saw their booth this year I knew I had to get more - they always have such an amazing collection of colors, and their yarn (at least their superwash merino) is just divine. It was hard to pick just one, but eventually these two huge skeins of gorgeous turquoise superwash merino just had to come home with me.

I probably would have been perfectly happy to have gone home with only that, but there was a booth there selling those collapsible tapestry bags and I've been really wanting one, so I snatched the one with cats all over it (big surprise). It came in quite handy for the rest of the day, to cart around all my finds.

Near the end we stumbled across a booth where almost everything was marked at 40% off. My friend and I stared at each other, and then dove into the yarn. The second I saw this I knew I had to have it.

It's a wool and acrylic mix so I figure it should hold up to being machine washed (although I do intend to swatch, just in case). I love the little specks of color - it makes the yarn have a stained glass sort of effect. My friend picked up a pile in the same color pattern, except the main color in hers is a softer lavendar, while mine focuses more on the blues. Mine is destined to become a cute short-sleeved sweater for me. The only thing to do now is pick the pattern.

I did manage to find something fun for my Secret Pal (which will go into the mail in the next few days), and my friend gave me these.

What fun! We've already got the Shakespeare set and the cat lover's set (which makes for quite the bizarre little phrases appearing on our fridge after some of our more creative friends have been over to the house). I can't wait to see what our friends come up with now that they have knitting terms to throw into the mix.

Posted by Jenipurr at February 11, 2005 10:47 PM