For some reason I just couldn’t sleep very well Friday night, we were up late working on the taxes.. but that wasn’t what was plaguing my mind.. just random stuff. So when 6 a.m. came around I wasn’t ready to get up! But I had to!
My friend Marianne from church came and picked me up and gave me a ride to my ride! Thanks Marianne! It was nice because I got to know a bit about the area we drove through, it’s east of us and I generally head south and west for things!
The Swap Table:
We got to Knitter’s Fantasy just before 8, which was nice because the swap table was full of goodies!
I got a handful of small amounts of small gauge yarns a nice little mix including some Koigu, some Casscade Fixation and some nice vintage mohair! I also grabbed a bag of beads, and a neat little rhinestone belt buckle. ( thought Azia would like those!)
There was a boatload of books and pattern leaflets on the table, so I dug through and picked out a few I thought would suite me. The Dale of Norway sweater pattern on the left there is really nice and simple and rather timeless. Most of the patterns and books were so 80’s they made me want to gag! hehe
The Vendors!
The vendors were set up in the gym, and it was a very nice setup! It was bright and there was a lot of space to move around and enjoy the wares.
I had a gift certificate for one of the vendors and that was pretty much all I was going to do. A planned singular surgical sale! I thought about getting something practical like a case for my new collection of crochet hooks, but in the end I got something for me!
Kraemer Sterling and Silk. It has real sterling silver spun into it. You can’t see it too well in the photo, but it is pretty. And it came with a free shawl pattern that looked like a nice easy knit so I got it! I’ve had my eye on Kraemer yarns for a while, they are based in Nazareth PA not to far from where I grew up, so I thought it was cool there was a yarn mill there!
The classes:
I took two classes, Mosaic Knitting, and Teaching Kids how to Knit. (I had signed up for the Mobius cast on class but that filled up instantly it seems.)
The first class on Mosaic knitting was not quite what I thought it would be, but that was ok! I enjoyed it! Pat Jones the teacher was great!! She is ‘famous’ in the local area at least at this event for having gone up on stage during the fashion show in a piece that still had the needles in it!
She could definitely go places with her knitting and teaching if she wanted to.
The Teaching Kids to Knit class was good. The teacher offered up a neat station based method for teaching kids in a group of 12, they go to different station and do different things related to knitting and preparing for the project., while the teacher is able to work one on one with the students to actually teach the knitting.
The rest of the day:
The fashion show was a bust. Not that the things people showed weren’t nice, it was the announcer and the pace! You couldn’t hear anything. Lunch was good, but they took back the coffee and other drinks a bit early in my opinion, especially since the school had turned off the drink vending machines.
I ended up going back into the vendors to take another peek, and ended up talking to Leslie Wind, a Jeweler from Massachusetts. She has some very interesting stuff! She gifted me with a little knitting related pendant, which is actually a knitting tool and I am going to try it out and review it later here, or at Loom Knitters Circle.
All in all it was a long, but fun day!
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