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Stitches West 2012!

Wow, I am seriously behind in my updates!

Stitches West happened over a week ago and I am still trying to soak in the good, relaxing vibes from the whole weekend. This year, Ang and I were taking a seriously laid back approach to the whole weekend. No real solid plans other than walking the floor, doing a little shopping, and then spending the rest of the time relaxing and not doing a whole heck of a lot besides knitting.

Of course, I was SO laid back that I didn’t take many photos.

FRIDAY

Friday was mostly a travel day for us. We made it to the hotel around lunch and a friend of mine met us there to have a bite to eat with us. He actually got to see the showroom floor before we did. He told one of the security guards that he was looking for his wife and they totally let him in. He came out with a show booklet and a hand stamp. I wonder why I didn’t come up with a good story!

We walked part of the floor before grabbing dinner. Kinda just checking stuff out…

SATURDAY

We ladies met us down in the hotel bar where Ang and I had settled in and started having breakfast. We lucked out and scored some couches! See, it is a tradition with us that we will hit the floor in shifts just so we can hang on to a set of couches in the bar all day and not lose our place. It works like a charm.

Most of the day was spent on the floor….fondling the yarn and buying things. I can’t say I had a real plan this year as far as what to buy. I knew I wanted to buy some gray stuff. I did. I also had stuff to pick up for friends too. All in all, I ended up with a quite a haul!

There were quite a few things I was tempted to buy, but didn’t. I showed amazing restraint and didn’t buy a fleece…mostly because if I clogged up the bathtub again I would be in serious trouble.

We also stopped at one particular booth quite a few times to pet a specific yarn. I don’t know what it is about Angelique and I, but we had ‘cashmere radar’ all weekend. If the yarn had cashmere, we were drawn right to it. This one vendor had this yarn that was so pettable, we couldn’t resist…but I had some serious misgivings about buying any of it. Let me explain…

I should start off by saying that this particular vendor is not one that I have ever purchased from before, but a few years ago, Angelique did. She got sucked into some ribbon madness that turned out to be a disaster. As far as what led to that disaster, I should really let Angelique speak to that…but the heartache that came from it was enough to make me steer clear of this vendor’s booth for a few years.

This vendor also doesn’t price their yarn. You have to track down someone in the booth to get a price sheet. For some people, this isn’t a problem, but for me, it is.

Finally, this was the thing that really was the decision maker for me, we decided to look on Ravelry to see what people were saying about the yarn. At this point, I think we were close to considering chucking all that stuff I just mentioned above out the window and buying some (despite the $85 dollar price). So we hop on the internets and check out the reviews…and the biggest complaint was that a lot of the skeins were labeled incorrectly. The skeins are supposed to have 325 yards in them, but there were plenty of folks online complaining that skeins were mislabeled. Of course, you would think that would have been corrected before a big show such as Stitches, right? You’d be wrong. I can attest to seeing at least two skeins labeled 420 yards before we checked into this business on Ravelry.

Alas, I will buy my cashmere elsewhere.

We spent the evening in the hotel room eating leftovers from lunch, knitting and watching crime shows on TV. Yay!

SUNDAY

We started the morning off slowly since we were up ‘til the wee hours knitting and I finished my Honey Cowl! I still need to get a picture of it completed though.

We did the whole eating breakfast and checking out thing before hitting the road sometime around lunchtime with Suzanne and Vilma. We didn’t have too many stops, so we made it home in good time. The van didn’t enjoy the trip though. It made it home, but then had to go straight to the shop to get fixed up. Something with the oil pump I think…

Tags: 2012, Stitches West