Stitches West 2016

Every year I say I'm not going to go to this because I don't need more yarn, but every year all the knitters I know get all excited about it and I end up going. This year I signed up for a market class  as I usually do. I like being able to go on Thursday evening as it not nearly as crowded. 

I thought I was going to be wandering around by myself Thursday, but I ended up finding 3 friends. It made the whole evening so much more fun. Also hugging a giant felted dinosaur makes everything more fun. 

I saw these adorable little jellyfish. I thought the lady said the kit to make them was $25, but the sign as I noticed later said $15. That's a lot more reasonable, I might have gotten them in that case. But they are so cute. 

Friday was the day of my class and a day to go see all the yarn things I wanted to get a second look at. It was another lucky day of running into people. I found 4 people I knew before I even walked through the doors. 

I had a project list with yarn requirements. I didn't want to end up with a bunch of single balls of yarn that would just end up as hats. I found a lot of very pretty yarn that would have fallen under this category. I resisted all but one ball of this, and that was was 80% off so not too bad. 

One very clever thing I saw was this odd things called "sock blanks". They take two strands of sock yarn, machine knit it, then dye it in crazy colors. Then when you want to knit your socks you knit two at a time right from the blank and you end up with two identical crazy colored socks. I thought this was an awesome idea, but I didn't want crazy socks. Maybe striped socks, but they didn't have a blank for that.

After shopping for a bit I headed to my class. I walked right by the information desk, so I asked where it was rather than figure it out myself. The lady directed me the opposite direction I thought I was supposed to go. I figured she probably knew what she was talking about, and it made sense with previous year's instructions. I walked over there, my class was not there. I looked at my badge with the class location, and tried that. Which was on the complete opposite side of the convention center. When I got there a hotel lady was blocking the hallway saying the door was locked. Pretty soon the rest of the class started to show up, also confused. The lady from the hotel went to go figure out what to do, so I walked down the hall. My class was not on the list for the room it said it was in. As a group we decided to walk to the information booth to find out where to go, and found the teacher for the class. She directed us to a room on the second floor completely not where anything said to go. But, it was a room full of looms, so perfect for a rigid heddle weaving class... Except we weren't allowed to sit at the looms. The looms were for a different class. We all had to crowd around her little teaching table at the front of the room. Some people didn't even get chairs. The entire "class" was watching the teacher warp her loom and weave a few rows. It wasn't much better than a live youtube video. I went and complained after, and was promised a refund (which I have not received). Not a happy experience.

This is my very healthy lunch... They screwed up my order as usual, but I got it free!

Another stitches find this year is a thing called Creativebug. They seem to be trying to be Craftsy. I don't think they have succeeded. Craftsy is awesome because they have in detailed classes. CreativeBug seems to be more project based, like a video pattern. Their site is subscription based, I have no plans at continuing it past the year I got. It is very overpriced for what you get if you don't have the Stitches deal. But with the stitches deal, it is worth a year of new random crafts. 

One project was a beaded bracelet, so I went to the bead store at Stitches. I found these lovely metal beads. 

All the things! The ball "Wool and the Gang" was my free creativebug yarn. I had been looking at this yarn online for a while, so it worked out. The coolest thing I found was two different kinds of retro reflective yarn, so I can now make nighttime safety hats. I took this picture with a flash to show how bright they are. I found some neat buttons; some heart shaped ones, and some buttons that look like already sewn buttons. Both are super cute. The most unexpected purchase was the cute knitting and sheep themed fabric. It will be perfect for future project bags.