Monday, March 3, 2014

Stitches West, 2014

Jeepers, there has been a plethora of travel the past two weeks.

I have all sorts of interesting pictures, but I’ll start with Stitches.

We, my sister Martha and I, travelled in style down to the San Jose airport, and made our way to Santa Clara for Stitches West, a knitting extravaganza like no other we’ve ever been to. (We did go to Sock Summit, but a totally different type of vibe)

So, we arrived early and made a beeline for the out of doors to replenish our Vitamin D.

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Straight up poolside…..

We were intrigued by the giant lamps. Martha said they were very illuminating. She might have been a little tired…..

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Crazy, right?

Our room looked out over the new 49er stadium. Levi Stadium. We used it as our navigational beacon to vector us back to the hotel when we went for our walks. Because we had to have a walk. In the pleasant sunshine.

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Check out the ginormous mega-jumbo tron looming over the end of the field. Yikes. That could be a mean close up if you get caught on that. Please do NOT circle me….(a little MN Twins joke…..)

Street view-

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Yeah. Ginormous like that.

The other views were like this-

Sunset…..

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Sunrise…..

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And the room was like this.

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Knitters have arrived.

We took two classes and hung out in the market (huge with thousands of vendors---exhausting) and with friends.

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It was so much fun.

Martha bought a giant skein of yarn-I mean giant. (I am starting to see a theme here. Although at the time, I guess I didn’t realize everything was GIANT. Huh. How did that get by me till now?)

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Phone for scale-she had to have it wound on a special giant winder (again with the giant-the hell?) because there was no way our ball winders could handle this baby. Everybody asked about it. Crazy. It was beautiful Miss Babs yarn though. I was VERY tempted.

We took a walk on Saturday with our friend Julie (on the left in the group picture). Here’s our tall shadows.

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There were interesting cement murals of wildlife which were pretty cool.

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This guy looks a little sad because someone wrote on his head…..

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And here we are, enjoying the sun. Neither of us remembered our sunglasses! (Maybe because we hadn’t seen the sun in a week or so….)

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We figured out meals in the courtyard,

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And saw some beautiful flowers.

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Cool huh?

On Saturday in the early afternoon, we attended a podcaster meet up. I was so happy to meet Knitty Barb and Tracie, Brenda Casteel, Debra JavaNut. And to be able to hang with our friends Julie and Nancy was wonderful. We also met many other fabulous knitters-all so open and friendly-it was great.

At the end of the day Saturday, we flew back home.

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We were ex-HAUS-ted. Naps were had by all!!

I can’t wait until next year.

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