My Looking Glass

Yarn Orgy Weekend

I'm back from my weekend at Stitches in Northern California. I was delighted to see that the Silicon Valley is really quite beautiful, and I can say I understand the draw. The show was at the convention center in Santa Clara, and this is some of the yarn in our booth before we sold all but 48 skeins of it. A close-up follows.

A group of 20 of us had an excellent fusion dinner on Santana Row at a restaurant/bar called Straits. I could totally get into living there, too. I had no idea there was any culture at all in San Jose. Even though it's purely new and hipster, at least they're trying.

So this was one of those trips where you eat, drink, shop, and knit. I won't bore you with details, but if anyone reading this knows what Noro Silk Garden is, they'll be amazed to know I got a bag of ten skeins for $60. I got Nicky Epstein's new book , too. She's a doll, by the way. I had a nice chat with her at our booth one morning before the show opened. She let me try on a new design of hers (a poncho) that's coming out in the UK version of Knitter's magazine. It's beautiful; look for it.

By the last night, the cold I was nursing sprung into full bloom, and I actually went down to the little shop in the hotel and bought some 10-dollar NyQuil. You know it's bad when you pay street prices for over-the-counter cold medicine. It did the trick, and I slept well and felt well enough to hang out back in the showroom all day the last day.

These two shots are long exposures taken first during our descent and then getting ready to land at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. We sold so much yarn that we were able to break down and get out of there early and get home at 9:00 instead of 10:30 pm. I confess, my favorite part of any trip is coming home. And to top off this homecoming, there was a note that a package had arrived and was in the refrigerator. I opened it to find a friend had sent me cookies and milk for my birthday. Seriously click on that and scoll down to see what I'm talking about. It was the perfect snack before going to bed!

But the fact remains that, even though today is my annual solar return, I need to rest tonight more than I need to party. So I called my family to postpone our evening out to celebrate, and now I'm going to pop some street-grade NyQuil, have some milk and cookies, and call it a weekend.

And for those of you who don't know, one of my favorite writers committed suicide one year ago tonight. His widow offers us this gift today by which to remember him. RIP, HST.

posted by LA @ 6:32 PM