Stitches!

What a fool am I! Stitches Midwest, the yarn expo to end all yarn expos, has been happening every year practically right outside my door for as long as I've been knitting.....and I first went yesterday!

I went in a group with Lucia, Heather, Heather's friend Christine, and my mom. I had been concerned I wouldn't find someone to go with me, and I ended up with a group of 5! It is much more fun with a group than it would have been on my own. We split up and met periodically through the afternoon.

I was worried also that I would feel claustrophobic. I don't do well with crowds; I tend towards panic attacks when there are too many people around. So I've always avoided conventions. However, it was not crowded and not claustrophobic at all! I had a wonderful time; I think we stayed over 3 hours.

I did pretty good with not overpurchasing too! Although it was tempting, I pretty much made an informal rule that I wouldn't purchase anything I could just buy at the LYS or online from the usual sources. I was on the lookout for things that are special, unusual, one-of-a-kind, hard-to-find, and handcrafted.

I bought 2 bags of alpaca fiber from a lovely alpaca farmer man. The neatest part about his fiber is that the dye lot is the name of the animal. Mine was from Abby; a caramel colored alpaca. I actually bought only one at first and then went back for another :-) It is my hope that I can spin it well enough to make myself a small shawl or capelet from the resulting yarn.

I also bought an Addi sparkle hook. I know it's silly to spend money when I already have more hooks than I'll ever need, but this is an *Addi Sparkle Hook* for heaven's sake. So hard to get anywhere! I would have spent $15 to get the same thing shipped from Germany so I was thrilled to find one for $4.50 at Stitches. From the same place I bought a little bag of roving ends to feed my new obsession; needle felting.

And my lovely momma bought me a huge skein of fingering weight hand dyed yarn from Canada! It is so neat; has practically every color in it! I'm planning to use it with a neat shawl pattern I bought; which is more than a full circle but split in the front; resulting in nearly a poncho but one you don't have to put over your head. Sort of a Faroese shawl on steroids :-)

Besides that I got plenty of ideas and inspiration. One was an adorable Little Red Riding Hood cape that I simply MUST make. I didn't buy the pattern because I'm sure I can figure it out on my own, though. I also found JUST the pattern for the monster-green Lacey Lamb I bought with my birthday money. It's a shawlette that's featured in a Victorian Shawl book that is not even published yet :-)

Pics to come!