Let’s see. Where was I? Hm. Oh yeah…

H was a great roommate. We had some marvelous conversations, showed yarn purchases, shared shopping tales. And she was nice and quiet in the morning. She had a class to go to first thing, so was out of the room before I was. I waited around a little bit, hoping to wait out the initial rush at the door to go into the market. Since I’d gotten in the night before, I wasn’t in a huge rush.

By the time I got to the convention center there was a long line of cars waiting to go into the parking lot. They motioned us to go through the lot, out the other side, around the back of the convention center and hotel, around the front of the hotel, across the street, and into the parking lot for Marriott’s California’s Great America. When all was said and done I got a parking spot that was maybe a block away from the entrance. Not too bad. I came in between showers, so didn’t even have to walk in the rain.

For some reason the market was even more amazing on Friday than it was Thursday night. Maybe because I knew I had all day to look? Maybe because there were more people? No idea. But it was. I felt like a crazy person all morning. I rushed from one booth to another, often on opposite sides of the market, with no rhyme nor reason, buying yarn, not buying yarn, and I don’t know what. I was like a mad woman. At one point, fairly early on, I saw Cindi, Barbara, and Rhonda, stopped to talk for a bit. Later I saw Dixie, talked to her for a few minutes. But other than that I was alone in a crowd all day. I never did see H during the day. Or Kristie, but I knew Kristie was in class all day, so didn’t expect to see her at all. Not that it bothered me, being alone, because it didn’t, but it was a little… odd. Knowing that I knew a number of people there, but not seeing them. Whatever.

I spent a fair amount of time in the morning rushing around trying to get my Ravelry passport stamped. Oh wait. I haven’t told you about the passports yet. The Passports were a grand marketing idea. Ravelry gave out the passports, participating booths stamped or marked the passports in some manner, and when they were completed they were taken back to the Ravelry booth, and a front page was torn out for a drawing. I didn’t win anything. I never do. But I sure had fun with this passport. At least, I did after I got myself organized.

These passports were true marketing genius. I went into booths, sometimes buying things there, that I may have passed right by without that little introduction. Everyone I talked to who got theirs filled out said the same thing. Kristie spent a fair amount of money at booths she would have gone right by otherwise. I don’t know how much advertising in the passport cost, but I have to think that it was a worthwhile thing for people to do. These passports were really well thought out. They’re shaped and styled after a U.S. passport, have a different color cover with Bob on the cover. The pages are like the visa pages you’d expect except each one has the logo for the sponsoring store, a list of the store’s employees (complete with Ravelry names), and the store’s URL at the bottom. Oh, and the booth number where they could be found at Stitches. Pretty cool.

Anyway… While I was running around like a maniac, I did manage to buy a little yarn. But just a little. I got a total of four hanks of Louet Gems fingering weight wool for socks, two hanks of burgundy, and two hanks of eggplant. Glorious, rich colors. Oooh. Kristie knit some socks with this stuff a month or three ago, and loved it. Soft, nice to knit, great stitch definition. Then there’s the color. Yum. I got mine at Full Thread Ahead. I went in there in the first place looking for Cascade 220 (which no one thought to bring with them; all vendors seemed to ignore it, and brought only nicer yarns). I came out with the four hanks of sock yarn, and a free teddy bear kit!

That’s one thing I now remember spinning my wheels with on Friday morning: searching, in vain, for Cascade 220. Though a number of vendors had some of the Cascade yarns with them, no one brought 220. At least, no one I found. Cascade had their own booth there—not to sell yarn, but to promote it. When I asked there they explained that vendors all seemed to leave the best sellers at home, and brought along the nicer, slower moving yarns. I guess that makes sense. It was a bit frustrating, though.

At some point in here I stopped for lunch, and organized myself at least a little. I went through my passport, noted the booth numbers of the places I didn’t have stamps for yet, marked them on my map. When I went back in, I was able to systematically get to every booth that I’d so far missed. That was much better. Wish I’d thought of that sooner.

I also spent a lot of time running around looking for sock and sweater yarn that I could use to make something for my dear allergic husband. You know, his being allergic to wool (yes, actually allergic, gives him a rash) can be a bit of a pain. No one I talked to had a sock yarn that had no wool in it. No one. I was shown nice fingering and sport weight yarns that were all cotton, but that won’t do for socks. Not in my book, anyway. I did finally find some lovely yarn from Tess’ Designer Yarns for a sweater for Dave.

This stuff is gorgeous. Raw silk. Rich, hand-dyed chocolate brown. It comes in 900-yard hanks—it’s sport weight—and I paid only $30 per hank for it. I bought two.

In my wanderings I stumbled upon a booth that mostly sold polymer clay earrings and other jewelry, Just For Fun. But they also sold some nice buttons. I got a button for my Squatty Sidekick. I think I did a reasonable job matching the color considering the (still un-felted) bag was in my room.

I searched for for quite a while for Malabrigo lace weight wool. I found it at several booths. One didn’t have any colors I was interested in. One had a lovely blue, but only one hank, and I needed two. Finally I found some in a wonderful forest green at Commuknity. The yarn is a baby merino, and is incredibly soft. It’s fabulous stuff, really. In real life it’s a darker color than it appears in this picture.

Later in the afternoon I visited Yarn Place’s booth. Kristie bought some yarn from them last year, Graceful (I think), which was gorgeous, but had a very abrupt color change a hundred yards or so into the ball. Obviously, a solid would be the way to go instead. I’ve had my eye on their Gentle yarn, 5% cashmere/95% Australian merino, ever since. I know I keep saying this, but this yarn is so soft! The fine lace weight promises to knit up into a glorious, delicate shawl. The 100 gram ball has 1380 yards of yarn. I think I should be able to knit something nice with this—maybe even a couple nice somethings.

About 3:00, maybe 3:30 I hit a wall. I’d been up since some ungodly hour two days running, with very little sleep in between, and a lot of excitement. It was definitely nap time. Back in the hotel, between phone calls setting up dinner arrangements, arranging meeting Karen on Saturday, and talking to Dave (honestly, I must have made and received more phone calls in two hours than I did in the previous year), I took a refreshing little nap. I woke up in time to get directions to the restaurant from the concierge, drive myself there, find a parking spot, and be only a couple minutes late. Dinner was great. Kristie, Bob, Cindi, Barbara, Rhonda, and I all met at Red Robin for a fun and tasty meal.

Saturday morning I met my dear old friend Karen, who lives about 30 miles from the convention center, not long after the market opened. Before she got there I ran back to Tess’ booth, and scooped up some lovely green sock yarn, 450 yards for only $15. I am definitely looking forward to having this soft yarn in shades of green to warm my perpetually cold feet.

The only other thing I bought on Saturday was a bag of six balls of Fortissima Colori from Yarn Lady. Yes. Six balls. All the same color. But how could I resist? It was on sale for 70% off, so I got all six balls for only $17.00. Score. You know what? I’m not going to make socks out of it. Nope. The current plan is for pillows for the family room.

I was a really good enabler. Karen did complain about that at one point. I don’t know why! I only got her to buy two balls of Gentle, one the same red I got, one in a glorious, rich purple, some sock yarn, a copy of Victorian Lace Today, and a teach yourself to knit book with lots of photos in it (sorry, forgot the title). Tee hee.

After all that shopping, we were both ready to sit in a quiet place, have a little tea, and some conversation. I took her back to my room, where we did all that for a couple of hours before she decided to brave the rain and the roads, so that she could get home before dark, and walk her pooch.

So, that’s about it. My first Stitches West experience. It was marvelous fun. I definitely want to go again next year, and hope to be able to get into a class. Either that, or go home early. All those days of just shopping is a little beyond me. Fun though. Lots of fun.

Oh, if you were there, too, and saw this teal Seattle bag wandering around the show stuffed with yarn, that was me.