The Best Day of the Year | Sitches West 2014

Even with my crazy (busy) running schedule this year, I made sure that I would be able to attend Stitches West. After last year's fun, I knew I had to go back even if I could only spend one day there. Last year Courtney and I stayed the night and spent two whole glorious yarn-filled days in the Marketplace.

Of course I was still able to find quite a bit of yarn that I needed. I was much more selective about what I purchased this year. I wanted to focus on yarns I couldn't get at my local yarn store.

There was a lot of buzz about how The Plucky Knitter would be at Stitches West. From Instagram and the Ravelry forums, I knew that Plucky was a very very popular item. When a yarn is that popular, there's usually something to the hype, so I was determined to get my hands on some. While I'd never felt the yarn, I knew the colors were amazing. I told Courtney that the Plucky booth would be our first stop.

Even though we were in the front of the Marketplace entrance line and made a beeline to the Plucky booth, it was already pretty crowded when we got there. I had seen pictures of the 'One Skein Wonder' piles of half priced yarn on Instagram, so naturally that's where I headed. I came away with some Primo Fingering, Bello Fingering, and Plucky Sock.

Miss Babs was another booth I wanted to visit. Just like last year it was super duper crowded, but there's nothing like seeing her yarn in person and picking just the right dye job with extra pink! I picked up two skeins of Cosmic Fingering, one in Deep Sea Jellyfish and another in Perfectly Wreckless.

I almost want to just leave them in skeins and not knit with them. Almost. The colors are amazing!

Since I've been into sock knitting lately, I wanted to find some fun sock yarn. Courtney had bought some sock yarn at Oink Pigments last year so I knew they had some fun colorways. One of the ladies working the booth was knitting a hexipuff scarf with every colorway of yarn they were selling. I loved seeing how everything knit up, especially their Blackberry Brambles Sock yarn. So that's what I chose.

I like to do my research before yarn-y purchases, so while following a vendor 'preview' thread on Ravelry, I found out that Invictus Yarns is based in Sacramento. I love her colorways AND supporting local businesses, so I knew I'd find something. I ended up getting Master of My Feet in the Jelly Bean colorway. Nice bit of neon without being too overwhelming.

I also picked up a couple of skeins of lace weight yarn from Kitty Rabbit Kreations in a beautiful teal to make a shawl, but wasn't able to get a picture before the daylight ran out.

Besides the shopping, the best part of Stitches West is the stitch marker swap. It's organized by a member on Ravelry and you make as many stitch markers as you want and trade until they're gone. Last year I made clay birdies, so to change things up, I made mini skeins and simple beaded ones.

 I forgot to get a picture of the mini skeins, but you can kind of see them in the top left, under the yellow rubber duckies. After two years of swapping, I have a pretty fun (and colorful!) collection of stitch markers!

Stitches 2015 or bust! 

Lauren