Dear Reader, I Cast Them On

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So. I did promise pictures of yarn soon...and here they are!!

Wayyyyy back in April, I went with DF Jean to Stitches South. Now last year, Jean and I got into some SERIOUS trouble. You see, being the overplanner that I am, I printed out a map of the Marketplace, perused the vendor list, COLOR-CODED the map by type of vendor (yes, SAD!), then researched at Ravelry to see if there were any good sales. This was our first Stitches, so I wanted to do it right! I saw this one place that advertised 1/2 off yarn. WOW, I thought, We'll go there first! After all, they'll probably just have a few skeins.

BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh, naive me. When we arrived and made a beeline to the booth, we ran smack into BAGS AND BAGS of half-off yarn. It was corralled by one of those 3-foot-high child-gate enclosures, and it was about 5 feet by 12 feet? Maybe? We definitely could have both dived in and done the backstroke without hitting each other.

To make this long story slightly less long, we left THAT ONE BOOTH about two hours later, packed the back of Jean's Hummer, then wandered over to lunch in a daze. I'm not sure we even bought another thing after that, we (and our wallets) were so stunned by what we'd done. (Oh yeah, there was that little dalliance at WEBS...).

So this year, THIS YEAR, we had a plan. More a mantra, if you will. And that mantra was "No yarn in bags." We will not look at yarn in bags, and we will CERTAINLY avoid eye contact with that booth. I had a private directive: I could buy whatever, so long as I IMMEDIATELY CAST IT ON.

I gotta say, I am proud of us. We held out, even at WEBS, on sale yarn for sale yarn's sake. I bought the pattern and yarn for a cardigan I'd been eyeing for about a year! (For the sake of full disclosure, the yarn was in a bag, but that's only because the nice employee made sure it was the same dyelot).

 

I have to give props to the WEBS employee who helped me. I actually changed my mind later in the day about the color, and she just swapped it for me, no muss no fuss, without my going back to the cash register and waiting in line.

And look! I actually did cast it on!

 

This is Santos, by Berrocco for their Origami yarn.

I scored a sale bag at dellaQ (which now houses Santos). I also finally succumbed to the Malabrigo fumes and bought these two lovely skeins. I have now cast them on for a pair of Urban Necessity Gloves (but I have just cast them on, so not much to show.) I also got some lovely buttons (closeups below).

 

Aren't they glorious??!? I was hard-pressed to not buy the whole wall. And this was just one type (Czech glass). There were enamel buttons, bone, wood, metal....

 

Below the buttons is the beaded knitted fob I made (I took a couple "make it, take it" classes).

And finally, I got a beaded kumihimo necklace kit. I probably could have figured it out on my own, but the booth owner was nice enough to demonstrate, and I liked the colors.

 

And I have actually started it!

 

Freakiest WIP picture ever.

So even though it took me a few months, I did manage to fulfill my personal challenge of starting everything I bought. Now, if only I'd done the same for the needlework stash....

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