Stitches Midwest Recap: Part 3

Saturday, Sept. 12 - Since we had an afternoon class we got an earlier start and we were back in the Market not long after it opened. I hadn't brought the yarn I needed for our Intro to Entrelac class, but I knew I could find a couple of nice, relatively inexpensive worsted weight yarns - especially since this was the day we planned to hit up the Webs booth and pool our purchases for their discount.

First, though, we were armed with our list of appealing items from the Fashion show and started our shopping by wandering to the various booths to see the samples in person. Some were not as appealing when viewed up close, but we did purchase some patterns along the way.

The bulk of the yarn purchases came later when we made our dedicated foray into the Webs area. We did have a bit of a red tweed thing going on, as both Xandermommy and I picked up sweater quantities in similar, but different yarns there. I got my yarns for class from Webs, too, and Xandermommy found some other yarns of various weights that she wanted to try working with. And, as seemed to be the case every day, time flew while we were shopping and before we knew it it was nearly time for class and we hadn't stopped for lunch yet.

So, we deposited our purchases in our hotel room and headed back down to the lobby with about 20 minutes for lunch. Sam & Harry's was offering a special express lunch for Stitches visitors and we started there, but as soon as we were seated we realized we were cutting it way too close on time and we hurried over to the Starbucks cafe to split a prepackaged salad and a sandwich wrap.

Even though we scarfed our lunch and took some with us as leftovers we were still apparently the last ones to the classroom and settled in just before class began. It was a very quiet and serious class, but within the first 10 minutes or so we were both confident that we understood the concept of Entrelac outlined in the course handouts. It seemed like we both kept up with our swatch work well enough, although after messing up the first part of the bind off row I opted to save the rest of my new yarn and just leave my swatch on the needle for the day. I don't know if either one of us has a project in mind where we might use Entrelac, even after the class, but it was still fun to learn a new technique - especially one that might seem counter-intuitive without the nice diagrams.

After the hurried lunch we were both hungry for dinner and a bit tired of running all over so we decided to return to Sam & Harry's for our expensive dinner out. It was a nice dinner with tasty wine and some fabulous steaks and we were well stuffed by the time we headed back to our room. This was the first night that we managed to return to our hotel room relatively early and we decided it was definitely a night for relaxing and knitting. Nearly an entire movie and a few TV shows later we settled in for our last night in the hotel and our Stitches trip was nearly over.