Traveling by train is a different sort of temporal shift than traveling by plane. If you've taken a long-distance flight, you're usually dealing with time zones and gain or lose days/hours, which is odd, true. But traveling 19 hours by train and arriving the next day without having to adjust your watch is almost freaky. Freaky, but fun. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
When all was said and done, I came home with 13 new yarns. To be fair to me, though, because everyone knows I don't need more yarn, I only purchased 8 of them - five were lovely gifts from my posse to thank me for getting our hotel room from loyalty points. So that would be only 2 yarns a day. I think that's reasonable. :-)
I can't say enough about how awesome it is to be in the midst of so many knitting rock stars. To be able to take a class from
Chrissy Gardiner, or to have
Lucy Neatby or
Janel Laidman comment on how cool our hats were, or to seek out
Cat Bordhi and ask a specific question about her
Sweet Tomato short-row heel technique... well, that's just priceless.
All my classes were great, even those where I didn't think I learned a whole lot. For the
Bosnian toes class, I learned that it's just a garter-stitch toe; nothing more, nothing less. But the instructor showed us different ways it could be customized and enhanced that I hadn't thought about before.
Swing By Your Heels was a cool technique I had read about, but never was able to put to practical use, nor was I able to imagine the variations it would allow. Even
Clara Parkes class (
Tips and Tricks for Stretch and Strength) was basically the same class I took at SS09, but I picked up a few more tips this time.
I'm sure there are more SS11 musings, but those were the ones that came to mind right now.
