I went, I saw, I stashed

So. Knit Nation, eh?

(Yes, basically another photo dump, but this one gets its own whole post because… well. Knit Nation!)

I didn’t take any classes. I really, really wanted to take Franklin’s photography class, but I was busy babywrangling when registration opened, and, well… I hear it sold out in about 4 minutes flat. Oh well. I’ve been doing my very best to learn how to use my camera, and am actually improving a tiny bit, and have also figured out that the auto settings really work very well indeed at least some of the time, and… look, I’m never going to be a yrn pr0nographer, but I am going to at least stop whining about it. And that’s a promise. (Yeah, right.) ANYway. So, I pootled along just for the Marketplace and general conviviality. I didn’t set myself a shopping list or budget, on grounds of I seriously have a huge and beautiful stash, consisting almost entirely of the kind of beautiful hand-dyed yarn so prevalent at shows, so I probably wouldn’t feel the need to buy anything much, right?

You can see how well that worked out.

In my defence, though, most of it really isn’t readily available outside of shows. And I don’t go to many shows. (Just this one and Fibre Flurry, really.) I bought three beautiful skeins of laceweight from Gabrielle‘s talented mother. And another lace skein from Well Manor Farm (the stall Clara Parkes got so excited about; it is wonderfully sheepy). And three skeins of Socktopus Sokkusu (talk about sproingy!). And one of Wollmeise. (I’m not even a huge Wollmeise fan. The colours are amazing, but I am not sure about the texture… no sproing! None! Still, yardage, and stitch definition, and durability… and, of course, the colours.) And, um, a Zauberboll and some Scrumptious… yeah, not so hard to get hold of, those, but they were right there. So, stash happened.

Hey, it’s not my fault, though! It was the shawls. Every other person seemed to be sporting an incredible shawl over their shoulders. (Doubly impressive, really, since it’s pretty damn hot in there. I had hoped C would be showing off on my behalf, but as much as she loves her rabbit jacket – seriously, she’s been wearing it even on really hot days – it was just too much for her.) Anyway, so yes: too much pretty knitting on show. Powerless to resist. Had to line up the wherewithal for future shawlage. Just had to.

Funny thing: I seem to be quite remarkably prone to colour ruts. Practically all of my laceweight stash is in subtle, heathery shades of purple and bronze. With fatter yarns I’m a bit more versatile, but chances are I’ll fall for turquoise before anything else. And this time? Twice, I had to buy two skeins of something because the two colours together looked exponentially more delicious than either did apart… and in both cases, the combination was teal and lime. Hm.

I might need to form some rules ahead of Fibre Flurry.

PS. This post is a bit weird and malformed. It’s all about stuff, and even if I spent almost all my time in the marketplace, my KN experience wasn’t really about stuff. It’s much more about the delight of being among My People; and also, this time, a bit about being there without a stand to run. Since I find exhibiting hugely, unreasonably stressful, scary and frankly distressing, that’s a good thing. But also sort of a weird thing. And while I sort of want to talk about that, because weird is interesting… well. It’s midnight. And I’m honestly not sure what I have to say. I guess it might come out later.