Stitches West
5:51 p.m. - 2004-02-20


I enjoyed my day at Stitches. I took the BART in, and the line waiting to buy tickets for the Market was tremendously long. While I was waiting, some lady came by on one of those personal People Movers or whatever they are called, with two wheels. I had only seen them on TV before. It was fun watching her roll along beside the line, taking out a table or two and snagging a tablecloth here and there. The lady in front of me asked me to save her place in line while she went to the windows to wave to her arriving friend, and after she got back we all got in an interesting conversation, which helped the time pass quickly. We talked about who taught us to knit, and at one point I mentioned that I owned three knitting machines. They wanted to hear all about it, but were surprised when I explained that you do not just plug it in and stand back, you actually have to do something (and besides, mine are not electric). "Oh" my new acquaintance said, "so it's like weaving!" And I said that yes, it was. You have to move the carriage and manipulate the stitches.

Everywhere I went in the market, there was that Alex Xenakis or whatever his name is, from Knitter's Magazine, with a camera crew, filming people buying stuff and talking about stuff. The camera guy and sound guy were saying to each other, "Do we have to get releases from everybody or what?" and sticking the sound boom into the booth right past my nose. I couldn't seem to shake them no matter where I went.

I barely spent any of my money but did manage to get the Sock Wizard program and a companion program that prints out knitters' graph paper. Then I hunted around for interesting patterns and even got one for a cute crocheted sock, not clunky at all, but very attractive. There seems to be a big interest in scarves as accessories, using fashion yarns like eyelash, but that does not thrill me, so I just looked. A lot of the scarves I saw on women looked almost Post-Apocalyptic with snips and snags hanging all over the place. Reminds me of Mad Max. At lunch time I walked down the street to my favorite little restaurant and woe is me, it was out of business! The whole place was empty. I took the train home and went and got my tetanus shot. After that, having missed my lunch, I walked across the street to the quilt store, and BIG SURPRISE! Next door a yarn shop has opened up! They don't have much stuff yet, but what a great location! They have a helper girl who is one of the most beautiful people I have seen in real life, I swear she looks like some kind of African princess, only not regal and standoffish but kind and sweet and wonderful with kids. A customer brought in a three-year-old girl and this clerk had the shy child laughing and talking in about two seconds. It was a very sweet little episode.

I bought some Addi Turbos and a pattern. Which reminds me...when I was getting off the BART train, I got to talking to a lady who acted lost, but I could tell she was a knitter, so I showed her where the Marriott was. As we walked along, she told me she was the sister of Ann Norling, the knitting designer (I have several of her patterns!) and was meeting her sister there to go out to lunch. I also saw Margaret, the hat making lady, but she went by too fast to say Hi to, trying to avoid the woman on the Personal Mover.

I was looking at knitting and thinking about knitting and buying stuff to knit with, so now I better actually go knit something.