and a good time was had by all...

I'm back from Northern California and Stitches West!  It was my first time at a Stitches event and boy was it fun.  I arrived on Thursday, checked in to the very lovely Hyatt and was immediately whisked off for lunch with the other instructors.  I got to sit at the table with Fiona Ellis and Sandi Rosner and it was fun chatting with other passionate knitters.  Then we all filed out to take part in the student welcome luncheon and the "instructor speed dating" event!  Basically, each instructor was given a table to sit and chat with about knitting, classes etc.  Then 3 minutes later we all got up and moved to the next table and started all over again.  It was crazy, fun, hectic and hilarious and I think the students were having a pretty good time getting to meet all the teachers.

Then Cookie had to go off and teach a class while I met up with the vivacious Knitmore Girls, Jasmin and Gigi, and had a little interview - I'll post when the podcast goes live.  Thursday night we had a little slumber party and watched the ladies figure skating on the Olympics in our jammies.  Cookie and I both got obsessed with tangerines, and we ate some crazy chocolate we bought at Whole Foods.  Cookie had chili pepper dark chocolate (yumm) and I had bacon chocolate! (weird - tasted just like chocolate covered bacon!).  The delicious tangerines were clementines called "cuties" and we practically turned into tangerines ourselves we ate so many.  The next morning as we were wandering around, slightly lost, we found a lone cutie in the stairwell... We visited it every day we were there, and when we ran out of our own supply of cuties, we contemplated eating it.  But we didn't.

Friday I taught an all day class - How to get the Most from a Handpainted Roving.  That is a really fun class for me, all about getting predictable color results in your spinning.  When I got to the classroom I discovered that they had set it up with tables.  The spinners were an accommodating bunch and we soon figured out how to work around the impediment.  Everyone seemed to have a good time and lots of beautiful spinning happened.

I had both spindlers and wheel spinners in the class and the spindlers were working hard!  The class has a lot of spinning in it, and it's 6 hours long, so I think there might have been a few sore arms that evening.  Everyone got excited when I taught my technique for faux-ro (fake Noro) yarn.

Then Cookie and I headed off to the Hilton to meet up with Christine and Adrienne from A Verb for Keeping Warm for dinner.  We were joined by the delightful Michael Wade from Fiber Beat podcast and while we were waiting for our table, who showed up but the twinkly Gene Beugler and the dapper Lew deYoung.  I had never met Lew before and I must say I was instantly smitten.  We also chatted with Mona and Stephanie from Dye Dreams, Darlene Hayes from Hand Jive, and Debbi from Blue Moon Fiber Arts before we finally got a table and went in for dinner.  Cameras were flashing all over the place, so you may see some pictures turning up somewhere (I hope my eyes were open!).

I had to take all my photos with my iphone camera because my regular camera's battery ran out (of course, why does it always run out when I'm away from home?).

Saturday I came down with a horrible cold (figures!) so I spent a lot of it in bed, but I did get up in time to scope out the market!  Whoowee! Stitches has a big market full of a lot of amazing stuff, but I was too tired to buy anything on Saturday.

Then Sunday I taught my second class, Spinning for Socks.  That was a 3-hour class and just about everyone told me they would have liked it to be longer, so I think they were having fun.  We made lots of pretty yarns in that class too.

All of the supplies for my classes were dyed by Chameleon Colorworks.  They always do a great job with space dyed rovings and I just love using their BFL in my classes.  They showed me a new product they have which is overdyed Black and White mixed BFL which gives you a terrific heathery depth of color.  I'll post more about it when I try out my sample.

Then I went back to the market of course!  I couldn't leave Stitches without doing some shopping!  I came out with a small stash of loot which I'll share with you as soon as my camera battery is revived.

All in all, it was a really fun experience for me and I'm pretty sure a good time was had by all.  Wish you all could have been there - I'll definitely be at Stitches again next year.

Comments

[Mickey]

Sounds like you had a wonderful time. If I were a colorway, it would be "green with envy".
Mickey

[College Research Papers]

Hi, interesting blog. i also get knowledge from your blog.That was a great help to me.