Stitches West- the Saga (Part IV- Finale)

Sunday was the last day of Stitches, and the best day (in my opinion). Katie generously offered to pick up coffee from Barefoot for everyone (which was WAY nicer than I would have been), while we stoked out the front of the e-ticket/raffle ticket line.

We did the very last of our shopping early-ish, and sat down to listen to Jane Sowerby talk about her book, Victorian Lace.

I just recently caught the lace bug and had Victorian Lace on order, but truly didn't think I could knit anything out of it right away. After listening to Jane talk about the whole thing, and seeing them in person, I now have the confidence to knit about 90% of the stuff in the book.

Even Andrew, who has NO interest in knitting lace, was thrilled at how much effort and research had been put into the book and Jane's eloquent explanations of how simple it was.

Jane was so inspiring that after her talk, I made a beeline for the WEBS booth (where I had earlier bought a cone of 80% alpaca/ 20% silk in a gorgeous burnt orange) to see if there were any other colors of laceweight that I wanted. There weren't.

We sat down and waited for Julie and the girls (whom I got to borrow for a bit over the weekend) to show up, critiqued what we saw on people, in booths, etc, and I decided to stop being a dumbass and go and buy the Don't Drop Spindle and glass orifice hook from the Ernst's.

See, I had gone into their booth like four times, picked up the two things I wanted, chatted with Michael and Sheila and hemmed and hawed about buying something so decadent and beautiful. I normally wouldn't, but they're made of Pyrex, and typically the equation looks like this:

Glass + Jasmin = broken beautiful thing

All I could think about what how heartbroken I would be when the eventual event would occur, and I would in the end destroy this beautiful thing. But I went back FOUR TIMES. It was Sunday afternoon, and my two things were still there. It was fate telling me that this time could be different.

I told Andrew to hold down the fort, I sauntered myself right into their booth, grabbed my two things, and announced to Sheila that budget be damned! I was buying these, wrap them up please, ma'am!

I also wanted some of the glass needles, but I know I can call and have them send me those any time, and it was only budget-be-slightly-damned. It's going to have to wait until (at least) Persian New Year in the hopes that my father will give me some cash to play with.

I hung out until about 3:30, when I left for home and wrapped up my Stitches. Wrap up and photos of the haul to come.