The rain's a coming....

We've been watching the weather all day and we are in for a rough night tonight.  We've seriously thought about staying over and enjoying one more day of the market, but our budget's couldn't handle it.

Stitches South 2010 has been fabulous!!!!  I will definitely be back but I'll have to give it a few years for my yarn budget to recover.  Today we met up with Jan and her daughter and sister.  It was nice to see familiar faces from home.  Unfortunately pictures aren't allowed in Stitches so my photo's will be limited.  Sometime tomorrow, when I recover from the drive, I will start to post pictures.  (hopefully all the loot will fit in the car!)

UPDATE:
Here's some of the photo's from Stitches South 2010

My loot:

My Mom's loot:

The Ravelry party on Thursday night was a blast!  They gave out a nice little thank you bag with samples and coupons for Stitches.  We got to meet Jess & Casey.  Mom even won a raffle item.

STITCHES Postcard

Hi everyone! I thought I would show you what a good time I am having at STITCHES!

You can view more at STITCHES Live!
Sincerely,
Mary & Carolyn< /font>

On the road to Stitches South

just testing to see if emailing to my blog works.

I've started the trip on the road to Stitches South!!!  Staying the night at my Mom's house tonight so we can leave out nice and early in the morning.

Gauge on....

My mother recently saw Shirley Paden on an episode of Knitting Daily and fell in love with a cabled cowl coat from her new book, Knitwear Design Workshop.  In the book there is a beautiful cabled coat that mom would love to have made.

http://eimages.interweave.com/knittingdaily/mail-by-date/2010/100119/KnitwearDesignWorkshop2.jpg

The coat calls for 3800 yards of aran weight yarn.  Yes, wow!!  3800 yards!  So today we picked up three different yarns to be knitted into gauge swatches to see which one we want to make the coat out of.  We chose Trendsetter Merino VIII, Berroco Pure Merino and Cascade 220 Superwash.  Tonight I started knitting the first gauge swatch in the Trendsetter Merino VIII and already I found an error in the pattern.  Just a minor thing in the chart legend and thankfully I figured it out before I started knitting the entire coat.  Stay tuned for postings of the swatches.

This will be the knitting projects of all knitting projects for me.  I hope I make it to the end.

"I want a balloon animal..." - Mom, 2010

Boy, was Mom surprised that the gentleman making the balloon animals actually heard her.

Today was a fabulous day spent with Mom and my best buddy on another yarn store crawl.  This was Mom's first trip to visit Miami's yarn shops.  We first went to The Knitting Garden in Coral Gables were she bought some beautiful worsted weight yarn by Punta Yarns - so soft, it reminds me of mmmmmMalabrigo.  Our next stop was Anneke's Needleworks.  At Anneke's we saw newly hatched baby ducklings, sooo cute.  Anneke said they just hatched yesterday.  Finally we stopped at Elegant Stitches where all three of us managed to find some yummy yarn to tempt our yarn budget.

So, how do balloon animals come in to play??? Well, we discovered that right across from Elegant Stitches is a mall.  I couldn't tell you how many times we've been to this store and didn't know it was there.  We decided to eat at Johnny Rockets (after we finally found it, courtesy of my best buddy confirming the location with two people in the know - aka employees of the mall).  We each had a delicious hamburger and yummy milkshake.  There was a balloon artist making balloon animals for the kids.  Well, the place was quite noisy with the music playing and Mom jokingly said "I want a balloon animal!".  The balloon artist actually heard her and promptly came to the table.We couldn't stop laughing and he kindly made her a red dog (to match her blushing face), my best buddy got an orange alligator for her husband and I chose a flower.

How can you beat this day??  Spent with family and friends, yarn fix, milkshakes and balloon animals!!

Life is good.