Stitches Midwest

From Yarn Stash

My trip to Stitches Midwest was incredible. It was a great first knitting event for me. The cost of admission was reasonable, I took one class on bead knitting from Deanna Van Assche, and I saw, felt and coveted more yarn then I ever imagined possible. I visited with some local yarn shop owners, and took notes on endless yarns, projects to try and books to read. In short it was total inspiration.

This was actually a three-day event, but my friend and I attended for just one day. I think this was plenty. We were able to each take a class, and make it through the marketplace, even taking a break for lunch and checking into our hotel. Besides, we were two gals on a weekend vacation without our kids. We had other plans too - IKEA, pierogis, and a trip to the Japanese market.

I've never attended an event like this before. There were vendors of all sorts, selling yarns, needles, notions, kits, patterns, books, roving - the variety of items was overwhelming. I stuck mostly to the yarns as I have a ravelry queue full of patterns and I've got plenty of needles to get me started on most of them.

There was one vendor in the marketplace - I believe it was Woolstock Yarn Shop - that basically set up a corral and filled it with bags of yarn. One worker stood in the middle of the corral and tossed bags of yarn around. The prices were 40-50% off retail, and each bag had between 4-10 skeins. This was a great way to get enough of one kind of yarn for a larger project (sweater, vest, blanket) without spending a ton of money on individual skeins. I got 5 skeins of the Noro, and 10 skeins of the blue variegated Queensland Rustic Wool. This one seller alone made the whole experience for me. I love quality yarns, but as a graduate student/mother of three I don't have the extra budget to purchase 5-10 skeins of yarn at a time. This was a great way to pick up a large volume of high-quality yarn for an affordable price.

I have to say that I'm feeling more like knitting then blogging, so I'll leave you with a few pictures of the yarn that I picked up at the marketplace. I'm so excited to have these in my stash - especially the Noro sock yarn and some hand painted sock yarn from Cherry Tree Hill. Ever since I began knitting I've coveted these yarns, and now I own some. Weeeeee!

From Yarn Stash

From Yarn Stash

From Yarn Stash