Stitches Recap, Part 1

First of all, I want to apologize ahead of time, because you are going to be hearing a lot from us in the next few days, well at least a lot from me. There are several things I have put off posting because of the Olympic knitting. First and foremost, we have our Stitches trip to tell you all about.

We started out trip on Thursday with Nonnahs and myself driving up to Santa Clara. Nasus had class Thursday night, so she flew up to meet us afterward. We rented a rockin' Cobalt Cobalt


(never heard of one? Neither had we) to spare our aging vehicles the road trip and had a fairly uneventful drive that actually "seemed" a lot quicker than we were expecting.

We saw some of those famous Happy Cows from California as well as those very sad cows off the side of interstate 5. We also saw quite a few sheep, which we kept pointing out to each other like the little kids we are.

True to form, we had a little loopy experience at the airport making numerous loops around the San Jose airport while Nasus dealt with a potentially lost suitcase. Fortunately, the airline was able to locate her bag and her precious Stitches homework was rescued.

The next morning we got up early in time for our class on Friday morning. As mentioned earlier, we took Melissa Leapman's Basic Pattern Drafting class. It was great and perfect for our level. We had all the basics down that we really needed to have to get the most out of the class, but we still learned a ton. It was well worth the price of the course and Melissa was great. If she comes to your LYS, I highly recommend taking her class. We left feeling that it was completely possible to make our own things and modify patterns from others. It also made us really interested in taking her next class on pattern drafting, too. By the way, isn't it amazing that three people with the same instructions get such different results?


After our class we headed off to the market place where we ate hot dogs and french fries for lunch and saw more than we ever thought possible! Unfortunately, we were barred from taking pictures in the market - what the heck?


It ended up being mostly a sock yarn haul for us. Since a lot of the LYSs in San Diego don't carry some of the most coveted sock yarn on the web, we took the opportunity to pick up some Socks that Rock as well as Cherry Tree Hill and some Koigu KPPPM. I also had to get some Claudia Hand Painted Yarn "Oops" - a name like "Oops" has Dis written all over it. We also each picked up a copy of the Socks that Soar on Two Circular Needles, a technique we are all itching to try.


I was also impressed with the yarns at Ferncrest Farm. They raised their own Angora goats and died all the yarn with plants from their own farm. The yarn colors vary from year to year depending on the plants that year. I found the proprietor wonderful to talk to and I appreciated that she still had time for me despite on obviously busy day (unlike one other - to be left nameless - shopkeeper who made a nasty comment to my back - grrrr). I look forward to ordering some of their great yarn when I have the right project.

After several hours at the market, we were pooped and made our way back across the street to the lovely Hilton where we were staying. First of all, the hotel had some of the best beds ever - I slept like a baby the first night, something that rarely happens to me. Plus they had a seat in the window! How cool is that! I spent as much time as I could in the window because how often do you get to sit in a window? Everyone should have one of these, really.


We ended up waiting way too long before getting dinner. We didn't want to go out but we needed to, but we had no idea where to go. After looking through the dining books in the room, which were obviously geared toward business people on expense accounts, not three yarnaholics sharing a double room, a little ad for the Olive Garden in the local phone book caught our eye. I called the restaurant and asked how to get there and a helpful hostess promptly helped me with directions. However, I failed to ask what we came to realize was a critically important question - how far away are you? We ended up driving about 20 miles and making a complete U-turn with the freeways to get to a stinking Olive Garden.


Not only that, when we finally got there, at which time we were close to passing out with hunger and completely delirious, the place was packed as if it was 1988 and the new cool place to eat. This was when we realized we had just driven 20 miles for take-out.