Thursday PM class was cool. Merike Saarnit taught "Fiendishly Difficult Stitches" to a full class of eager (and often befuddled) students. She talked briefly about what makes a stitch 'fiendishly difficult,' then gave us a handout with 3 patterns that she thought fit the description. Ah... yeah. I've become a chart person, preferring to knit pattern stitches from them instead of verbal descriptions ("*K4, P6, C6B, P6, K4, P6, C6F, P6, K4, repeat from * until you lose track of where you are in the string of Ks and Ps). But some of these stitch maneuvers defy charting.
"From back to front, stick the right needle between the 4th and 5th stitches, purl this stitch [what stitch??], bring it around back, put it on the left needle, purl it [again?], drop it off the needle, slip the next 4 stitches from LN to RN, pull the purled stitch over the 4 slipped stitches."
Yes, that's a real stitch. And it actually it isn't all that hard to do and looks pretty cool to boot. But... um... dudes... there's no universal symbol for THAT one! The words are okay, but we really needed to see her fingers make the movements to really get it.
The Market preview was after the class, from 5:00 to 8:00. Bee-line to Blue Moon, scored the Silkie yarn I was looking for, then found a lovely Rare Gem. Um, then later I found a Mill End skein that jumped into my bag. ChickWithSticks found the booth selling Kollage square needles, and their circulars have the most awesomely limp cords! Bought one of those, then also found some wood circs, with the cords made from medical tubing. Got one of those, too. Picked up two more tiny crochet hook key chains (although I found the expensive ones, Knitterliness found the cheaper ones, with even smaller sizes - hope she can find/remember which booth so I can get some of those). I think that was it for Thursday's bounty.
Had a lovely dinner at Tomatina's in Santa Clara with Knitterliness, ChickWithSticks, and SarahG, doing show-and-tell before we got tomato sauce on our new yarns.
Back again this morning with Kadootje (after a stop at OPH for some 49er Flapjacks!). I had been eyeing the Namaste Zuma bag with lust in my heart, but after (trying to) carry it around Balls and Skeins in Sebastopol a few weeks ago, found that it just didn't stay up on my shoulder. Not good. I'm not a crook-of-the-arm purse holder, I'm a shoulder-sling kinda gal. So I got their Newport bag instead. Roomy, with separate pockets for purse-stuff and knit-stuff. They retail around $70; Fibersphere was selling them for $59, so I bit. Plus the set of 3 little mesh bags to stow stuff inside. Got 2 more of the medical tubing needles, too. No more square needles - for the price of one set of square circulars ($16) I got 3 sets of the tubing ones ($5 each). I suspect the square ones will last longer than the tubing ones, but hey...
Kadootje scored just about everything she was looking for (including a skein or two [cough.orthreeorfour.cough] of Blue Moon in some gorgeous colors, and some yarn for her sister's pending baby. We departed before 1:00 and promptly ran into traffic on southbound 101 - a truck hauling humongous rolls of paper fell over and they had to close 3 of the 4 lanes. We finally got through it and had a rushed lunch at Red Robin so she could go pick her son up at school.
I've been spending the afternoon trying to come down off that yarn-fume high (and organize my purchases, photograph them, and have a sharp talking-to with my budget).
Tomorrow? Post-Stitches party time at Bobbin's Nest! I'll help with the prep, spend some schmoozing time, then giddyup home... so I can go back to Stitches Sunday morning for my last class! Yippee!
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