Stitches West

It was a crazy plan really. I can’t believe it worked out. We were
booked on a flight to L.A. at 2 p.m., however we still wanted to get our fiber
shopping fix at Stitches West, a HUGE knitting convention in downtown Oakland. Plus, we had special orders to pick up bamboo needles for Gen so she could knit on the plane. The convention opened at 10, and we must have showed up at about 10:30. we attended the year before, so we thought we knew what to expect. When we arrived, there was the biggest line! It went all the way down the hallway and must have had at least a hundred people in it. Everyone was just waiting to pay to get in. There were only 2 people taking money. My only consolation was that the line was growing ever longer behind us. Once we got inside, it was pretty packed. maybe you saw us there, we were the only ones without white hair or some kind of knitted flair…. We were in line forever and only had an hour of shopping time before we had to head off to the airport.

i think the best discovery we made there was the sock yarn. i was totally blown away. it took us forever to figure out that yarn was variegated so that the cool patterns just appeared when you knit in the round. we kept staring at the yarn in disbelief. Needless to say, I bought a skein. I also got a small pattern book with some super-hot leg-warmers that I would like to make in hot pink. Speaking of hot pink, bunny got some pretty nice hot pink mohair out of a discount bin.