KatieLiz Knits

Here and there...

BABE 2005 was much too fun, good friends, great beads and we even managed to visit two yarn stores. Click here if you want to see their photo album.

On Friday I took a Kumihimo Braiding class with Alethia Donathan of DACS Beads. This necklace is from Alethia's Gallery and is similar to what we made in class. I don't have a finished picture yet, I didn't like the beads that came with my kit, so I'm rebeading it.

I bought a Marudai (Kumihimo loom) and set of weights, so I'm looking forward to creating more braids with my yarn scraps. I'm thinking of joining a "Yarn of the Month" club just for the samples.

On Saturday, we hopped the bus to The Knitting Basket in Montclair Village, a quaint little shopping area in Oakland. I bought a pattern for their "Koigu Wave Scarf," a drop stitch pattern and got two balls of Stacy Charles Ritratto colorway 81. Yum! The store was nice and bright, the yarns were displayed by color, rather than by type. I can see pluses and minuses for that type of display, very nice if you know what color you might want to work with, but not what yarn.

Going back to the hotel was a bit of an adventure. We were told we could catch the bus back to the hotel at the same stop we got off at, as that was the turn around point. They neglected to tell us there were 2 number 15 busses. Guess which one we got. LOL Fortunately, it didn't go too far out of our way and rather than pay a quarter to get a transfer, we decided that we could walk the 10 blocks faster than trying to find which bus we needed and where to catch it.

On Monday, we went back in to San Francisco (we'd been staying in Oakland for the show) and visited ArtFibers. What a nice shop! We got there before the store opened and had a breakfast of fresh fruit at the small buffet downstairs. ArtFibers sells sample of yarns, 6 to 12 yards for $2.50 each. Great for Kumihimo braiding!

If you go, read the signs on the meter posts, not just the street signs. We thought, from reading the street signs, that there was no parking from 3 - 6 p.m. for loading. That's on Saturdays. If we'd read the meter pole, we'd have realized it was all day during the week, so parking ended up costing us $60.00. CRAP-O-RAMA!

I did get quite a bit of work done on the Here & There Cable scarf. I was going to finish up the first skein on Saturday and post pictures, but as I was knitting, I dropped a @#$%$#@ stitch and had to tink back 6 1/2 rows. Again, CRAP-O-RAMA! At the end of the night I was right back where I started.

Anyhow, I have pictures now. I don't think I'll be needing 7 skeins, so maybe some matching gloves or fingerless mitts... Hmmm... Will have to figure out how to work that pattern in the round. As is, this measures 12 inches, but will need to be blocked and stretched widthwise to show off the cables.

Here's a picture that I pinned out to show a bit more of the detail. Since I'm using Koigu KPPPM, I added another repeat (18 stitches) to the width. One skein of Koigu did 15 pattern repeats plus 3 rows.

posted by KatieLiz @ 9:11 PM