My friend Erica and her husband, Branden, moved to Maywood (Chicago suburb) in July and she invited me to their place as their new home was only 40 minutes away from where Stitches Midwest was being held.
I drove down Friday night and was at their place around 9 pm. After a tour of their house, we had tea and knitted for a bit before going to bed. Saturday morning we had breakfast of frittata which I'd never had before but really liked! We then went to a farmers market in Oak Park which was way smaller than Madison's, made a quick stop back at the house to drop off goodies from the market and Erica to make something for her lunch and we were on our way.
After one wrong turn, we knew we were heading in the right direction when we saw this.
Once inside there were rows and rows of vendors. Erica's method for such events is to tour the entire show making notes and then going back to select booths to make purchases. I really like this method because you never know what the next booth or row will be and there is less chance of buyer's remorse. We made it almost way through but I needed a break due to low blood sugar so around 1 pm (or it could have been later), we stopped and had lunch. Continued on after lunch and I did pretty well budget-wise until I made my purchase at Miss Bab's (but I'll go into that a bit later). Here are my purchases, not including the BIG red hat I had to purchased to protect my delicate skin (part of the curse being of Anglo-Saxen descent with red hair) and the shawl kit I purchased from Just Our Yarn.
The green yarn (Miss Bab's color way Spearmint Tea) in the upper lefthand corner is going to become the A-line cardigan from Cabin Fever (pictured). Also from Miss Bab's was the green and black yarn (Franken Sock), the orange (French Marigold), and the purple/green/orange (Ghoul Friend).
After Stitches, we went back to Erica's, knit/spin/had supper (I highly recommend Trader Joe's pizza crust - its already made up just have to roll/push it into shape), maybe not in that order but after two months you can understand why the details may be a little fuzzy.
Sunday was breakfast of homemade gluten free muffins that Erica made (delicious!) and more spinning though if memory serves, Erica had fiber that she was carding. I made progress with my drop spindle. Enough so that my spindle is no longer in danger of rolling out the of the basket, it now has a place to nest in my spinning basket. My departure was delayed as I had a try at Erica's spinning wheel. 'm definitely going to work on my drafting and at some point I would like to try out more wheels so I can get a wheel of my own. But first I have to complete a few dozen projects to make room for a wheel!
