22 February 2009

Knit out.

How's this for bad blogging?
Last week I went on a fabulous work trip - a trip to the 'Knit Out' at Mall of America & not only did I fail to mention I was going, but here I am dragging my heels in coming here to tell you that I went & it was fun. Exhausting, but fun.


I had never been in the presence of so many knitters & crocheters before! They took over the whole place - it was great to see a variety of people. I was at the Spinrite booth - answering questions & talking to people about upcoming patterns & yarns while they waited (and waited) in line. Because of the high volume of people, I didn't get a chance to see any of the other booths or watch the fashion show, but reports were that everything was pretty fun.

This was the line-up to get to our booth on Saturday - pretty crazy! I was happy to see so many men with their ladyfriends on Valentine's Day.

The woman knitting had her pattern tucked in the hood of her friend's sweater ahead of her in line. She stuck her knitting in there too!

Mall Mascot for the 'Underwater Adventures' pretending to eat our froggy washcloth.

After my long day of chatting up knitters, I put myself on the Light Rail and headed to Minneapolis to meet up with a crafty internet friend - it was great!

Jackierocket! This past year has been a weird one, socially, for me. Hanging out with JR was so relaxing & fun - I'm glad I mustered up the energy to get out of my hotel room. I didn't stay out too late though, Sunday was a brand new day of Knit Out fun. By the end of it, my throat was scratchy & I was suffering big time from healthy food withdrawl (Not many vegetarian options at any of the places we went...) - but I was high on all the great ideas I got from talking to so many people. *highfive!*

My trip knitting for this was socks for me with some of the Kaffe Fasset Regia sock yarn. I've been diligently knitting only from my stash & was pretty excited to finally knit with this stuff.
I cast on in the airport, knit on the plane & when we touched down 2 hours later, I had turned the heel & picked up the gusset stitches. I didn't have much yarn left, but I kept knitting hoping it would magically turn into more.

It didn't.

In the airport on the way home, Sara was nice enough to rip the entire thing back & I restarted from the beginning.
My initial cast on was 66 stitches - too much. I cast on 60 this time & started the heel flap about 1 1/2 inches sooner than on my first go.


I finished just under the wire with just the tiniest bit of yarn left over.