Saturday, February 25, 2012

Stitches West 2012

I like to sample and test knit, so when our friend, Purlswannahavefun asked us to help knit a few hats for The Knitting Ranch's booth (320-322) at Stitches West, I said sure.  Hats are quick and easy. Unfortunately I forgot to take modelled pics of the blocked hats, so I only have unblocked hat pics. For the blocked hats, make sure to stop by The Knitting Ranch's booth.


Pattern: Porom by Jared Flood aka Brooklyn Tweed
Yarn: Lana Grossa Evento
Needles: Size US 7 & 9


The yarn, a cotton/wool blend was rather interesting.  It felt like the core yarn was cotton and the fuzzy stuff was the wool.

The second hat knit up was:
Pattern: Regina (free on Ravelry) by Carina Spencer
Yarn: Lana Grossa Alta Moda Cashmere
needles: Size US 10 & 10.5

The hat had a really fun construction and I'll definitely be knitting up my own.  The free pattern is one of those "gaugeless" hat patterns where you don't really need to swatch first.


This year I finally took a class at Stitches West, Anne Kuo Lukito's Turn Socks into Gloves. She's the designer of Crafty Diversions.  It was a nice short (3 hrs only) fun class.  So instead of going on Friday and Saturday, I did Thursday and Friday. My test glove from the class is that partial mutant blue thing by the t-shirt in my Stitches haul pic.  I was a good girl and didn't buy very much.  Believe it or not, the only purchases I made were the project bags and some buttons for a pair of fingerless mitts in my knitting queue.  The Malabrigo Dos was from the Malabrigo booth, The gorgeous skein of blue fingering yarn from The Knitted Wit was "payment" for helping her dismantle her Interweave Lab booth and the beautiful Handmaiden Yarn Camel Spin was my payment for the 2 Knitting Ranch sample hats.

There are still 2 days left for Stitches West, so if you can make it, go and say hi to all my friends at the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth (Irishgirlieknits, tapmouseknits2, hizKNITS, Leianne and Sockateer Cockeye).