Stitches West

Stitches West:

I went to Stitches West today. It's a knit & Crochet conference. I've never seen so many hand knit sweaters, scarves, socks, and there was even a girl of about 15 in a knit skirt. Interesting pattern with bold stripes and such, but if you can't wear that to a knitting conference, then where can you knit it!? But I almost felt like I didn't belong! I wasn't wearing a single thing I've made. I was wearing an AE sweater actually. I felt like a sell out. And I've never even made myself a sweater! 

I want to remedy that, and was looking for a nice, plain knit cardigan pattern, but (get this!) I couldn't find one. Well, I couldn't find one that I absolutely love. My work office is freezing! In winter, spring, summer and fall, it's always freezing. (I totally hate air conditioning!) So I have a cardigan that I keep at work and wear almost every day. The one I have at work now is getting holes in it. It needs to be replaced... 

I thought the conference would be a good place to find both yarn and a pattern. I think that it would have been if I hadn't been so tired. Actually, I think my problem was that there was TOO much stuff there. I was a little bit on overload. Too many patterns to just choose one. Too much wool to figure out which one I like best. Wool of all kinds and styles. Wool from every beast imaginable. People were there and spinning it right in front of me. I'd never seen that in real life before.

So in the end I didn't buy anything, although I was ready to. I just figured I'd be more upset with myself if I spent a ton of money on patterns and materials that I didn't use in the end. I will scour the public library next time I can go and then just go to my LYS and figure something out. Or really, perhaps I will just buy more yarn online.

But, I should include these little guys too. They are the real reason I went to Stitches West. The Mother Bear group had a booth there and I was delivering them. I figured the $8 to get into the conference was a better use of money than however much it could cost to mail them to Minnesota. 

I'm not very happy with these bears actually. I think they are superlatively boring. There's nothing interesting going on at all with these guys. Sure, one has stripes, but that is still really boring.

But the women who run Mother Bear were there, and very nice. I even got to sew the hearts on my bears. Normally they have to do that once they receive the bears that have been sent, but I offered since I was there anyways. And I grabbed some hearts so that if I ever make more (which I'm sure I will thanks to all of the random yarn I have now...) I can sew the hearts on myself. 

So all in all, a fun few hours at the conference. And now I really want to make myself a nice sweater.