Stitches South . . . may it live forever

I love Stitches South.  It's a fabulous opportunity to take tons of fun classes and it gathers all kinds of knitterly goodness in one place.  It was last weekend and Dena came to my side of the country to take classes with me.  It was a lot of walking and we each lost a bracelet, but we had fun anyway.

The first class we took was Estonian Cast Ons with Merike Saarniit.  It was great!  We learned about 12 new cast ons and just imagined all kinds of cool things to make with them.

This is a flower that I made with one of them - just did the loopy cast on and knit two rows and bound of really tightly.  Then I sewed the two ends together in the curl the bit wanted to make anyway.  I made another one with a single length of petals but gave it to Merike.  

The next class was on Dalarna Mitts with Beth Brown Reinsel - Scandinavian twined knitting in colors rather than texture.  This is my first mitt - it needs its ends dealt with and the thumb finished.  It's so much prettier in real life and this is such a fun knitting technique.

Then we took a market session in knitted bracelets and another full class in Kumihimo with Candace Eisner Strick.  The bracelets on the right are knitted (and are replacements for the ones that we each lost at Stitches) and the bracelets on the left are Kumihimo.  The Kumihimo was so much fun and the beaded knit bracelets are so nice.  Glad we squeezed those in!

We also took a class with Anna Zilboorg called Free Sole Socks.  We learned how to knit a sock with a replaceable sole.  That way if you get a hole, you can just replace the sole and not loose a ton of work.  I'm planning to use this type of sole when I do some of Anna's stranded patterns which will be a huge amount of work.

We took one last market session class on Sunday - called Crochet:  Putting the Afghan Together.  In it, we learned how to crochet knitted (or crocheted) squares together using crochet to make them into an afghan. I made it through even with my very limited crochet skills but still haven't finished the edging on my mini afghan. Dena's is finished except for blocking and working in the ends.  I stuck with two colors, but she had to be fancy and use four!

And then there was the yarny goodness at the market.  A fiber person could have gone absolutely nuts . . . well, ok, we did go more than a little nuts.  

There was this lovely Fiber Charmer yarn - she's dying me a nice deep brown to go with the coral yarn and the green and the grey can go together if I decide to make stranded socks out of them.  This is lovely yarn!

And on the last day, we found a sale on Socks that Rock - 25% off!  So we bought a bit.  The blush on the right and the green on the right (bottom pic - left in the top) are Dena's.  The copperline and the green on the left (bottom pic, right in the top) are mine.  The two greens are identical.  The brown in the middle has been split into two equal balls which we both plan to use as the soles for our stranded socks.  Gonna look good!

 And this was the expensive stuff . . . a set of the smaller Hiya Hiya interchangeables.  I shouldn't have splurged on them because I have so many needles, but the set is so light that I can carry it in my knitting bag easily and not even know I have extra needles.  My bag gets so heavy with my knit picks needle sets in it - could be because I feel the need to carry all of them, but I need to lighten the load.

This is lovely - the colors are so much prettier in real life.  I think I'm making a small shawl out of it.  It's silk and merino and it's absolutely lovely.

Kumihimo goodies for me and the girls . . . I think they'll like this because it is fun, easy and quick.

We had a great time, spent too much money and are totally exhausted.  Can't wait to do it again next year!