Stitches East, Here We Come! And There We Go!

I'm just back from a whirlwind trip to Baltimore for Stitches East. This year, the whole family (I mean the knitters, not the children) made it. If you were there on Friday and saw four women in knitting t-shirts and North Face fleece jackets carrying the same pocketbook, you saw us--Mom, my two sisters and me!

There was definitely good shopping--I'm too embarrassed to post pictures of all that I bought. Suffice it to say, we filled up the car (as usual) and had a great time. I bought yarn to make sweaters (!) for me. And sock yarn, of course. And sucked my two sisters into buying sock yarn and starting socks (that's you, E!) or a Chevron Scarf (I can't imagine SLM will go for socks, but she did ask about the Socks That Rock Club). I mean, who can resist Socks That Rock or Lisa Souza for that matter.

One of the neatest things was meeting people who I've read about, and/or lurked on their blogs/shops (Lisa Souza) and/or listened to their podcasts (Wendy). Everyone was so lovely. Lisa Souza was warm and gracious, and gave E good advice on where to start with socks (i.e., don't start with the patterned ones). I had a lot of laughs with Wendy (you stayed at the Norman Bates Hotel at Rhinebeck last year? We stayed at the Shining on our girls trip to France!) I found the Interlacements booth--I have been eyeing the sock yarn for the past year at various sites--and met Judy who dyes the yarn and who was just lovely and friendly. Of course, I bought gorgeous, vibrant yarns. (Maybe I'll have to post yarn bit by bit).

I have lots of good projects to start, but way too many on the needles, so I told myself I had to finish one before casting on something new. So today, I broke out the Morehouse Farm Huckleberry sweater which needs a second sleeve and I'll definitely finish it today.

I brought the Lobster Claws fingerless mitts with me to finish on the trip. After consulting with my knitting committee, I'm going to work the k1p1 row that makes me look like I have bulging knuckles and then roll down the bound-off edge and stitch it down so it looks rolled. I just got so fed up Thursday night doing different variations that I didn't have the patience to come back to it. Maybe tonight after finishing the Huckleberry sweater.

The only down part was that I had a flare-up of my GI issues on Saturday; hopefully, it's just a blip. And getting lost on the way out of Philadelphia and hitting more traffic on the way home, but that 's for another post. Oh, and at lunchtime today, two boys started running low-grade fevers. Well, if they're too ill to go out, that means more knitting time for me, right? (I am ever hopeful).