Stitches East

Well, no big surprise, I spent WAY too much money. It all started Thursday night. It took me two hours to get to the event and I realized I didn't want to sit in rush hour traffic for three hours just to get to my 8:30AM class the next day, so I got a room in the Sheraton. No big surprise that cost an arm and a leg. But then I went on over and listened to Kaffe Fasset talk about how he learned how to knit in 20min and how to do Fair Isle in 10. Not sure how I feel about him after that! Ha. After that, I went to the market, which was open early for registrants and spent another load of money. I ran into an old friend and we both decided that given the choice between reducing our spending or simply not keeping track of how much we were spending, it was far more fun to go with the latter. After spending way too much money at the market, I felt I needed a beer or two to numb my brain, so I headed back to the hotel and plopped down with my purchases in the bar. I was very shortly joined by Elizabeth, who saw me sitting alone and came over to join me. When I asked where she came from, she simply answered "Canada". So, as a complete joke (you know how whenever you tell someone you're from Texas, they expect you to know everyone from Texas), I said: "Well, if you're from Canada, you must know the yarn harlot, right?" Giggle, Snork. Turns out, they're in the same knitting group. You could have knocked me over with a skein of laceweight! Do you remember when the Harlot was talking about not wanting to see the mystery stole until she finished it? Well, Elizabeth was the culprit who wore it to knit night! Elizabeth was a hoot and we spent about an hour talking about knitting, men and Canada in general. It almost made the small fortune I spent on the room worthwhile.

Waking up to this

and this:didn't hurt either!

The class went OK. Not sure if I like doing mitred squares or not. I had some serious issues with the whole knitting on two circulars thing and am not sure I'll EVER try that again, but am trying very hard to keep an open mind to it.

I'm pretty sure the bar across the street wasn't quite expecting a herd of knitters to come crowd their space:I ended up skipping Saturday, which meant I didn't see Lee, but I just couldn't handle the traffic again after driving home Fri night for another two hours. Plus, with the marathon in town, I knew it would be pretty wretched to find parking. I forgot about the game Sunday, or I may have blown that off too, since parking was no picnic with those dirty Ravens playing the Saints, but I did show up which is a good thing since I learned several different cast-on techniques, one of which will make my brother's next sock MUCH easier to cast on. It was a good weekend, but next year I need to find someone to split a room with me and just stay there the whole time. And I won't be taking an afternoon class on Sunday, since it lets out the same time the game does! Urgh. And I'll save a LOT more money than I did this year in preparation.

BTW, anyone who reads this and wants to check it out in the future, Sunday is the day to shop. True, a lot of stuff has been cleaned out, but there's also a lot of stuff on sale and not very many people there at all.