Acquisitions
I am certainly making up for my yarn diet (and certainly going back on one).
Purchases, in no particular order:
Yarnzilla - I hadn't been to Yarnzilla in ages, so I popped in today. I ended up purchasing the Flirty Ruffles Shawl pattern, a new pair of bamboo size 0 DPNs, and eight balls of Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4-ply to make various fair isle gloves/mittens for Christmas presents. (Enabling ahead: all of the Yorkshire Tweed products at Yarnzilla are 30% off!)
Kindred Threads - What should be two pounds (well, I paid for two pounds, anyway) of organic Coopworth fleece raised around Viroqua, Wisconsin. I visited this shop with Matthew and Bobby for the first time yesterday. It's a delightful shop.
Fitting Knit Shop - I really hate this store, but I have to stop by every so often when I'm in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It's mostly what I think of as "Grandma" yarns - pastel acrylic blends, along with a few decent brands. What's weird is that all of the yarn is stuff you don't find elsewhere, but it's not good yarn, necessarily. I did find some skeins of Manos del Uruguay - three in navy, and one pretty colorway that I had admired previously - for 50% off. It may become a one-skein wonder for someone or other; either that or some form of outerwear.
WEBS (at Stitches Midwest) - Once again, a sample drew me into its web. This time it was Fleur, which I will be making in "Asters". Five balls are winging their way to me. I also bought a cone of alpaca/silk laceweight, in what they call "red," though it totally looks burnt orange to me. This will become the Flirty Ruffles shawl. On our first pass through, Matthew and I bought some sock yarn; he'll be making some socks.
Yarn Barn of Kansas (at Stitches) - Irrestistable Knits (for $10), Latvian Dreams (for $15! - and, my goodness, is this an awesome book!), and some DPNs for Matthew.
Shelridge Farm (at Stitches) - 2 skeins of fingering weight merino and the paradoxical mittens pattern.
Blue Moon Fiber Arts (at Stitches) - One skein of lightweight in Philosopher's Stone for me, and one skein of mediumweight in Covelight for a friend as payment for birdie-sitting.
Windy Valley Muskox (at Stitches) - A very cute sweater pattern ("Gracie Top") that they don't seem to have on their website. Also: the knowledge that musk ox are ornery.
This sock, which I'm knitting using handpainted yarn I obtained in a swap, kept me company in Chicago while I was honeymooning. It had a grand time going places such as the Adler Planetarium (the humans had a less thrilling time) and Navy Pier (where we all enjoyed a ride on the tall ship Windy. I like it, despite its silly-looking, ill-executed yarn-over short rows.
Stitches, in short.
I was terribly underwhelmed by Stitches Midwest. From the talk I heard ("Buy your tickets in advance to avoid lines" "It'll take you a day to go through the market!") I was expecting a heckuva lot more than I got. We were able to get in the market without any waiting whatsoever (honestly, it's more crowded at the Yarnover) and it took me less than two hours to see every booth. Well, not every. I skipped the booths that were simply yarn shops imported into the convention center, since most of them were full of novelty yarn or full of full-retail-price, I-can-find-it-anywhere yarn. It was a bit silly how generic some of the booths were; I think that in order to really make an impact, you need to impress people with the sheer size of your booth (i.e., WEBS or Yarn Barn of Kansas), bargains, or specialty.
The food at the convention was astronomically priced to the point of being totally unreasonable. I am a bit thrifty, and the prices everywhere I went in Chicago really, really annoyed me. I hate it when people take advantage of people attending attractions and events, especially when the products they're providing are subpar.
Adding to the disappointment was my inability to find Beth and her Stitches companions when it was time for our little meetup. This was mostly owing to the vast numbers of Beatlesfest attendees that were swarming the hotel where we were to meet. After a fairly disappointing day of shopping (of course, the disappointment didn't stop me from spending a nice chunk of change, though not more than I had planned to spend) and having to deal with oodles of people everywhere, I threw in the towel pretty quickly.
For those of you interested, here are some honeymoon photos.
Matthew and I really liked Chicago, and it wasn't at all what we expected (though I'm not sure what we expected, exactly). I hope we can return someday to visit things that aren't tourist attractions. I think we had the most fun when we were around "normal" people.
Tipper @ 6:09 PM * link
|
