Monday, February 25, 2008

what I got at Stitches West... [long]

...I did very well.

I bought more this time than I have in previous year, mostly because I have some very specific projects in mind. I am knitting for two babies-to-be, plus there are some shawls that I want to make. And now that I'm spinning, fiber played a big role in my purchases.

I bought Ravelry and Stitches swag. I was lucky enough to get most my Ravelry stuff on Thursday—I got a button, the Rav and Bob pins, and the Ravelry bag. Then on Sunday, I bought a Ravelry t-shirt. I think I'm set. (LOL!) I also bought my 2008 Stitches West pin.

Ravelry and Stitches stuff

I have taken individual pictures of the yarn and roving and logged the yarn into my Ravelry stash. Rather that show the individual pictures and make this a really long blog posting, I'll show the over view pictures here. I have added a
Flickr set for my Stitches West purchases and included a Flickr badge in the sidebar.

First up, the yarn:

Stitches West 2008, yarn stash


I bought yarn for 4 shawls and several baby items. Next, the fiber:

Stitches West 2008, roving stash

I really wanted the Sheep to Shoe fiber in the Raven colors as I haven't spun any black yet. The other fiber just called my name!

I hadn't planned on buying a new spindle, but Carolina Homespun had the Spindlewood square whorl spindle in Purpleheart wood that I fell in love with last year, so...

Spindlewood Square Whorl Spindle

Not shown in these pictures are the fiber sampler from Chameleon Colorworks (Angora, Camel, and Yak plus some others), a Knitter's Block set, and a new ball winder (they are in the Flickr set though).

On Friday, I took Cat Bordhi's all day class "The Freedom of Foxglove Sock Architecture." Cat's a great teacher and I learned lots. Unfortunately, the yarn I chose for the class was too splitty and cause lots of problems. I switched to some cotton yarn that I had and it made my hands ache. At lunch time, I went to the market and bought some Artyarns Supermerino to start all over again. One frustrating thing was trying to find needles for the Supermerino. Yarn Barn carried a bunch of different needle brands, but the line was too long and I didn't want to be late to class. The only other needles I could find were Addis, too expensive when I knew that I already had lots of the size I needed in my stash. So I made do with what I had. My baby sock is a bit too small as a result. However, I love the architecture, so I will be making these socks using the right size needles. Here's what it looks like:

Foxglove Sock class project


The other class I took was Nancie Wiseman's "Knit with Wire" class on Sunday. This was a lot of fun. We got to pick from several projects so not everyone worked on the same thing. I chose a necklace with turquoise and white beads. (We all used copper wire.) Here's a section of my necklace:

Knit with Wire class project

It was great meeting my fellow Ravelers, playing the passport game, and just being with a bunch of people who share my obsessions!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Nice buys - you should be busy for awhile :) I bought the same style spindle at CH over the holidays, it spins very nicely - you'll really enjoy it(it actually makes a newish spinner like me look like I've been at it for awhile...). Terry

Just Jane said...

Alpaca needs a name....haha

marie said...

I love these square spindles! They spin like a dream and I can get some really thin singles out of them. My Josie and Moonstone yarns were partially spun using my other square spindle.

I think I'm going to spin some of my fiber sampler using the new spindle just to get a feel for the fibers.

And, Jane, I have named my stuffed alpaca. See today's post. :-)

WIP-it Wednesday...

...a little of this, a little of that.  No photos this week. Things look pretty much the same. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Dreaming ...