Sunday, March 01, 2009

Potlatch, Stitches West

Freddie Baer made her best T-shirt ever (if it's possible to distinguish between numerous excellent works), Ursula LeGuin and Vonda McIntyre were there, the banquet had tasty food and pleasant company, the con suite was always hospitable, and my only complaint was not getting enough time to spend with people I liked. Potlatch 18 is over, and what a terrific con it was!

In between, I managed to attend Stitches West, the biggest yarn market in the state; I bought drop spindles, dyed and plain roving (semi-processed wool, to the rest of you), snips of qiviut (musk ox fiber) and mohair and plain cream "mystery sheep", silk-and-tencel yarn, cotton yarn from Jill Vosburg (Just One More Row), rayon from Swallow Hill Creations for knitting into jewelry, paper yarn from Habu Textiles that looks like it were made from finely-sliced newspapers, truly weird linen yarn with persimmon extract that looks like brown barbed wire, orange-and-purple variegated Koigu (fine wool yarn) from my friend Merilyn Jeniye's shop Foxy Knits (and renewed my acquaintance with her sister Sharon), fabulous blue and green yarn, two skeins of Waikiki which is a sock yarn without any wool -- in a beatiful seagreen shade; and several interesting patterns. And I should have picked up Lucy Neatby's tractor sock pattern; and I would have gotten the Shelby Shawl pattern and some Cascade silk from Yarn Barn of Kansas but their line was always too long. I shopped with Royale Hare, Carolina Homespun, and more -- I'll try to amend these links when I find all my receipts.

-- Rachel

1 comment:

Grenadine Girl said...

Man I'm so jealous of your trip to stitches! I mentioned it on my blog at www.knitluck.com