Vermont or bust!

I just bought my airline tickets for Vermont Sheep and Goat Festival! I say that like it means anything to anyone. I admit that it meant nothing to me until a few days ago when it was revealed that some of the area ladies had found an adequate substitute for Stitches East and had already booked rooms for VS+G. Last year at Stitches we spent most of the time moaning about how it had gone totally downhill (or as my high school chum Frank once phrased it, "skyrocketed downward") since moving to Atlantic City. Our hotel sucked (and not because of the hotel-workers' strike, it would have sucked anyway) (btw I support a labor strike even if it inconveniences my lily-white self, so I begrudged them nothing) and the shuttle was less frequent and more unpredictable than it had been made out to be. Though the walk from the hotel to the convention center was not long, it was perilous, and everyone said, "Don't even try it." So we didn't. I ended up being late for my precious Melissa Leapman class, and I think we missed a few other things. Also, a number of teachers from the Valley Forge days were absent, as well as some much-anticipated vendors (lanaknits? we missed you!) which pretty much made us all wonder why in the world we even came. When I got back everyone said, "How was your weekend?" and I said, "Let's hope the knitting retreat in the Outer Banks makes up for it" which it did, by far!

So I'm not trying to knock Stitches. There are still a bunch of good vendors there, and I found all that great red Reynolds Odyssey at a good price for my entrelac scarf (excuse me, my MOM'S entrelac scarf now). There are a lot of teachers there that I respect, whose classes I would love to take, but the expense of Atlantic City (not to mention the extra 45 minutes of driving time, after eight hours already) reduce the value of it all. For the record, I would love to take more classes from Leslye Solomon and Judy Pascale. I think Edie Eckman really has the right perspective on fiber arts. Nancie Wiseman is a DOLL and I think her books are invaluable. Stitches is also a great place, duh, to see all the people from last year, and meet new folks who want to post your picture in their blogs (Amy Singer!!). If only I had been blogging last year then maybe Stitches would have been different (and I would have had less to drink). But I wasn't and so the misery of Stitches 2004 is indelibly marked in my mind as A Bigger Waste of Money Than Having Gone to College. (Btw, my college's current tuition hike puts it at $41K/year, which has actually changed my mind about re-enrolling and completing my degree there, as well as its new policy of NOT guaranteeing to meet 100% of students' "financial needs" w/r/t tuition. And going to Smith was in NO WAY a waste of money (unless you put the question to my father, payer of tuition) except I only have eight credit hours to show for it. (But Oh! the great pictures! and the stories of inter-house pranks! etc! all the college shenanigans without all the college... like going to Carolina!)

Now that this has turned into a wine-inspired rambling, I feel obligated to post a knitting-related picture.



Some people are big copycats and want to make their own Clapotis out of SWTC Bamboo, but those people bought "perplexed" colorway instead. The thing is, I made mine out of colorway "tequila" which speaks more about her own personal way of doing things, and she made hers of a subtly variegated single color, which makes me think that we were actually knitting EACH OTHER'S Clapotis. Of the two of us, she's the one who thinks that tequila might actually NOT be Satan's blood, and me, well, you know I hate yarns that are TOO variegated. Anyway, Agent Gray ripped out her Clapotis but not before snapping a shot of me using it for a bandit's mask. The bartender, not long after this picture was taken, wished us goodbye with the comment "Happy blogging." Yes, I have spoken of blogging in public. I am almost ashamed. My geeky pursuits are becoming harder and harder to hide.