On August 20th, 2010, I made the hike with Julie and Toni up to Stitches Midwest in Schaumburg, Illinois. I’ve been wanting to review the event for the last few weeks, but I keep finding myself hiding behind my knitting instead of actually sitting down to blog.
Part of the motivation for my Christmas knitting is that I want to knit on my goodies from Stitches. So I’ve been bribing myself… “if I finish this… I can do two inches of this…”
The best part about Stitches is that you get to try a little bit of everything. I find that at stitches I buy things that I wouldn’t normally buy. I fall in love with sweaters that if I hadn’t seen them in person, I would completely blow past… it’s crazy.
I seem to have a common color theme, blues, purples, and greens. All three sweaters that I picked up were a variation of green/teal.
Highlights of Stitches
I was on the hunt for a new pair of size 2 dpns. Mainly because I go through dpns more than anyone I know, not because I lose them, but because I have a problem with socks. Signature had a booth for their needles and I fell in love. I’m a sock knitter, that is NO secret to anyone who knows me. I LOVE SOCKS! I tried their size 2 dpns and couldn’t imagine knitting lace socks with anything else from there on out. They are so pointed, so sharp. The downside, they are expensive. I didn’t buy a pair, but they moved to the top of my knitting wish list 
Kollage Tweeted Me! While I fell in love with the Signature needles, I still love my Kollage Square DPNs as well. I showed her that I was using them, so she decided to post them on Twitter
Sweaters… oh sweaters… Here’s the thing with sweaters, I don’t knit them too often. Mainly because I see the pictures and go “that won’t fit me right”. This is where “the best part about stitches” comes in. You can try them on. I tried on three different sweaters and brought home yarn for all three of the sweaters. One of them involved winding an incredibly large ball of Cherry Tree Hill Oceania yarn the night I got home from stitches. That sweater is still on the needles.
What would a trip to stitches be without dinner at Maggiano’s with great friends. Yummy food and good times.
Falling in Love Again
Last December I declared that 2010 was the year of knitting for myself. While everyone who knows me laughed at me and told me I was insane I swore I was knitting only for myself. As usual, I was wrong I love taking on peoples challenges too much, not to mention I love knitting for my friends and family.
The problem is, I keep feeling like I’m accomplishing nothing this year. I was all about catching up on projects that I’ve started in the last few years, many of them have been sitting for so long. So overwhelmed with the amount of Christmas knitting, the amount of knitting for others, and what all was on my needles I had pretty much only been knitting on Monday nights.
Since I’ve been back from stitches, my needles haven’t been put down. I’ve been knitting sweaters, socks, hats, fingerless mitts, and presents for people (which may result in some dry knitting content for the next three months). I remembered that it didn’t matter that I have a whole bunch of started scarves and socks (they will be finished eventually).
I have all of this wonderful yarn and patterns and projects that I want to knit now and it has become motivation for me to get the Christmas knitting going and finished.
My projects are no longer laughing at me… and neither is my stash… even if I did come home with the biggest haul from stitches.
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