Wow. Okay. Talk about a fiber-holic’s dream. Now I see what folks are talking about. I can see why people go year after year. And I didn’t even take any classes!

Wanting to get through Los Angeles before the traffic hit on Thursday morning I got up at the stupid hour of 3:30 am, checked email, had a decent breakfast, and was on the road by 5:00 am. I know. But you know what? It was worth it. I zipped through L.A. in nothing flat—there’s virtually no traffic at that hour, even on a weekday. I was so early that though I stopped in Gilroy for lunch—hey, breakfast was a long time ago!—before 10:00 I was still at the hotel way before noon. What was it, H? 11:00? 11:30 when I got there? I’d never stayed at a Marriott Residence Inn before, where H had made her reservations. Wow. This place was amazing. To be totally fair, we weren’t in the type of room we were supposed to be. H had booked a single room, but for whatever reason they upgraded her to what they refer to as their penthouse when she signed in. Score. You wouldn’t believe this room. Actually, it wasn’t a “room,” it was an apartment. A nice apartment. A nice two-story apartment with two full bathrooms, a sleeping loft, and a murphy bed in the room next to the living room. Nice kitchen, too. Yeah. This place was incredible. They even let me stay in the same room at the same rate on Saturday night. All by myself. I swear, if you combined the square footage of the last two apartments I had it would be smaller than this place.

But enough of the hotel.

I went to the Ravelry get together on Thursday evening. I shouldn’t have been, but I was totally amazed at how many people were there! And talk about fun. Met up with all the local Ravelers who I expected to see there, as well as quite a few other Ravelers from all over the country. And of course, since I went to that, I was invited to go to the pre-show opening of the market that originally was limited to just people who enrolled in one or more classes. Kristie and I had the start of our shopping evening all planned out: we headed straight for the Blue Moon booth. Since I had a limited amount of cash, and a lot of shopping to do, I decided to only buy two hanks of STR: Jasper and Rook-y. Rook-y is in their Raven line. I’d seen pictures of it online before, but wow. This is fabulous yarn. The colors are so subtle and lovely. I don’t know if you can see the coloring in this black yarn, but it’s there.

This end of the hank has hints of teal and green, while the other end has hints of red and navy. It’s glorious! Another stop we made on Thursday was to Webs. I got ten balls of Debbie Bliss’ Donegal Aran Tweed in this incredible blue. I can’t wait to make a sweater out of it! I’m thinking a nice cabled cardigan, or maybe Oblique. We’ll see… While at Webs I also got myself a small cone of their Valley Yarns alpaca-silk lace weight yarn in a completely different, but equally lovely blue. I was getting so tired that I had no idea what I was doing, so I picked out four different colors, and walked over to where Kristie and her hubby, Bob, were standing, and asked them. The unanimous, and immediate, decision was the blue. I put all the others back. Oh, did I tell you? This glorious fine lace weight yarn is an alpaca-silk blend. Oh, so soft.

I know I’m bouncing around a little here, but going back a trifle… I also got a fabulous hank of Smooshy in November Muse from Purlescence Yarns. OMG. You wouldn’t believe all the shades of brown in this yarn. It’s fabulous. Other than making socks, duh, I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with this yarn yet, either. Actually, truth be told, other than the obvious plans for knitting all the yarn I got, there really isn’t anything specific out there, idea wise—just general stuff: socks, shawl, sweater for Dave. You know. That sort of thing.

Somewhere in our wanderings on Thursday night I also went into the Brooks Farm booth with Kristie and Bob. Kristie bought some yarn from them last year that’s fabulous, so I definitely wanted to check them out.

Like most things I bought at Stitches, this yarn is incredibly soft, has lovely drape. It’s a fingering weight yarn that I plan on making a shawl out of. I bought two hanks for a total of 840 yards. That should be enough to make something nice out of.

In between all that shopping, I also had a wonderful conversation with Eugene of Philosopher’s Wool. I’m happy to report that Eugene looks exactly like he did when they published their book, Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified. He’s a dear! We must have talked for nearly half an hour. He told me all the stuff about Philosopher’s Wool that happened after the book came out, trials and tribulations with selling yarn on the web, and other stuff. What fun! I’d love to have him and Ann over for dinner sometime… Dave’d love them, too.

Friday, other than running into people I knew now and again, I was basically on my own all day. So from about 10:30 am until, oh, 3:00 or so, I wandered around in the market shopping for yarn, talking to people, getting my Ravelry passport stamped, talking, shopping, eating. You know. And, since I’m running late, I’ll tell you about what I bought Friday and Saturday in tomorrow’s post.