My Annual Gobsmacking

I love Stitches.

This is the first time I've stayed at The Event. I am so going to do this again next year, except for more than Friday and Saturday night. The immediate company was great. Five of us in 2 rooms on the 15th floor of the Renaissance Schaumburg. Clare came. So did my sister and one of her daughters. So did my mother (the woman who got half way through her second mitten about 50 years ago and hasn't picked up a knitting needle since). Then, on Saturday night, my sister's other two daughters joined us at The Market and stuck around for dinner (I suppose it might have been "joined us for dinner and endured The Market until we were ready to go," but I'm a knitter and prefer the other interpretation).

So, what would you like to hear about first? Pattern Drafting with Melissa Leapman (yes, that Melissa Leapman, Cables Untangled Melissa Leapman, soon to be Continuous Cables Melissa Leapman.)

Perhaps you are curious about the fabulous yarn I scored at the Interlacements booth for the winners of The Blog Anniversary non-Contest?

Then again, maybe you'd like me to describe the incredible afghan at the Philosopher's Wool booth? (It's made out of squares. You know I'm a complete sucker for afghan squares.) I'll admit to a moment of serious cognitive dissonance when I realised the book was published by Leisure Arts. Leisure Arts and Philosophers Wool seem like very strange bedfellows to me. Then again, it's politics that makes strange bedfellows and this is an election year here in the States, isn't it?

I honestly don't know where to begin. There were the people from Esther's Place in Big Rock, IL. My sister talked to them for longer than I did, apparently there's an effort to reintroduce sheep farming into some of the less urban areas of Cook County.

The list goes on and on (and on). Yarn Barn of Kansas, who I always think I'm not going to buy anything from, and from whom I always do. Hand Painted Knitting Yarns (last years extravagant purchase) was (were?) there with these fabulous Shawl kits (I know what I hope my sister is giving me for Christmas this year, but you'll just have to wait until December). Brooks Farm. The Fold. Jennie the Potter.

Well. I'll try to be more coherent tomorrow. Perhaps by then the yarn fumes will have cleared a bit.