Which-Crafts?

The short recap - not suprisingly there was yarn, and knitting, and a cubic butload of fun. I bought beautiful stuff, learned a lot, and touched more yarn than I could ever possibly afford (hmmmmm quiviut, hmmmm cashmere). And while apparently I had a fetish for fuzzy stuff like angora and mohair this year - I didn’t end up buying any. Maybe I’ll just have to learn how to spin it.

The longer recap with some whining and complaining, but in general goodness and Yarn Pr0n to be had behind the cut  . . .

Transportation was a bitch - if I don’t get off my ass and get my DL soon, I be pretty peeved with myself. 4 busses (one of which was just me being lazy due to luggage and hotness) I left just shy of 1pm and arrived just shy of 4pm. While the RTA suggested the route I took, I think I would have been better off with the redline to the blueline EL.

Doubletree gave us the wrong room and I think (considering how booked they were) I was lucky to get us reassigned into the correct room. As much as I like Shadowdancer (known to some of you as HK), I prefer to sleep in my own bed. Speaking of which the bed was lovely, as was the bathroom and shower etc. But somehow me missed getting our cookies!!!

After a super-quick shower I went off to meet everyone for dinner, and then the open market. I have to admit I am a complete sucker for the show type environment where I always feel like I might not have the opportunity to find whatever cool thing I am looking at again. Shadowdancer and I didn’t actually make it very far around the market during the Thursday preview - we ended up losing quite a bit of our time standing inline to buy our Socks that Rock at The Fold’s booth.

Friday I had my lace class most of the day, and I’ll second and third other people’s recommendations - Galina Khmeleva is an excellent teacher. She is a font of informtion about the class subject as well as full of fun stories about how she learned her skills in Russia. The beginning lace class is fairly long (6 hours) and she kept us interested and amused while we struggled (for some) through our class exercises. The class wasn’t exactly what I had expected, but I certainly came out of that class having conquered my fear of lace and feeling fairly confident in tackling a project on my own.

We shopped a bit friday night, and then went off to have a fabulous dinner with some friends at The Marion Street Grill in Oak Park owned (just a little bit) by Shadowdancer and her husband. Then tacky drinks at the “tacky tiki bar”, and then back to the hotel to crash out entirely. I felt a little bad for E at dinner though - Shadowdancer, D. and I have a fair amount of shared social history, and there was a fair amount of “I remember” going on.

Saturday was Shopping Galore and when our feet and Credit Cards gave out we went back to the hotel and comitted Ultimate Yarn Geekery by sitting in the lobby (while we waited for Pizza) and entering all our new yarn and patterns into Ravelry

Sunday we went off to our Stitch Sampling class. I tried a few stitches I would never have given the time of day. The class was both bad and good, and we kibitzed and were snarky together at all the right times. There was a little more yarn buying and we both failed to with the raffle prizes for the money to cover the yarn we already bought.

Speaking of the yarn we bought – here is a small sample: