I’m back and still rather jet-lagged. I had a fantastic time, learned loads and met lots of lovely people. My brain still feels rather full from all the new information and things to think about and process. Meeting so many knitters and seeing what they are working on and have made is incredibly inspiring too, I have come home with so many ideas, and things I want to try out. I will attempt to write about the whole thing in a vaguely coherent manner, but apologies if I don’t manage it 🙂

We flew into Baltimore airport on Monday afternoon to give ourselves enough time for a spot of sight-seeing and time to adjust to the new time zone before Stitches itself. We were so lucky that although it had been rather cloudy as we flew over the Atlantic it had mostly cleared by the time we came down the east coast of Canada and the US. I love the perspective you get when flying (this is marred only slightly by the fact that I get travel sick on almost every mode of travel I have tried – walking is ok 🙂 ). Flying is, to me, still rather a novelty and I love to look out the window at all the scenery. It really brought home to me the contrast between the UK (particularly the South-East of England where I live) and the bits of the US and Canada that we flew over. Everything is on a much large scale over there, and is so spread out. It was also fascinating to see the difference in colours. Here at home autumn is just starting, the leaves are yellowish, just starting to turn a pale brown. When we took off it was overcast and the area around Heathrow is largely shades of grey with all the roads and houses, with greenish yellows and yellowish browns of the trees. Canada in contrast seemed to be mostly rich dark brown, dark red and dark purple. It reminded me rather of the heather (the plant that is, not me 🙂 ) on the North York Moors at this time of year. As we got further south the land became progressively greener, but still with a wide variety of rich variations. You could make some great colourwork garments inspired by landscape colours.

When we first landed I got my first shock of the trip, it was so hot! I had been reading the weather forecast for a few days before we set off to see what kind of thing we needed to pack (thereby perpetuating the assumption that the British are obsessed by the weather 🙂 ), but I had been convinced I was reading it wrong. On Monday afternoon when we arrived it was 31 degrees C and humid, and stayed that way for the first couple of days. I was very glad I packed my shorts and sandals 🙂

On Tuesday and Wednesday we did the tourist thing in Washington, D.C. and saw some of the famous sights.

If you are in the area I can really recommend the National Museum of Natural History (one of the Smithsonian museums, and free to go into). Then on Thursday to Sunday I went to Stiches while Paul continued with the touristing.

Registration for Stitches started at 8am on Thursday but I wasn’t up quite that early. I went to sign up shortly after 9am, and the queues were not too bad at that point although growing.

At 10am there was the Opening Day Presentation, entitled A Yarn’s Life with Barry Klein, Fontelle Jones and Dana Hurt. This was a very interesting presentation on yarn from the perspectives of a manufacturer, yarn shop owner, and knitwear designer. I found the technicalilties of how they make the yarn particularly fascinating, Barry showed a slide-show including pictures of several of the machines used in creating his yarns (Trendsetter Yarns). It was great to see the huge cylinders with dye-soaked shaped sponges around them that they use to dye space-dyed yarn. I had always assumed that was roughly how it worked but it was great to see it in action. I would love to go to a factory one of these days and see it all in real life.

After the presentation there was a lunch which included a wall of yarn provided by the yarn companies which sponsor Stitches. The idea was that each of the skeins had been cut into approx. 3 foot lengths, so that each attendee could take a length of the yarns they liked and create their own Ultimate Stash Guide (we were given a little booklet which had details of the yarn, and selotape was available for people to stick their yarns next to the right description). It was a great idea but a bit of a scrum! The lunch was my first opportunity to really see how many knitters there were, and the answer is a lot! I had arrived for the opening presentation about half an hour early and sat near the front so I didn’t really see quite how full the room got.

Thursday afternoon was my first workshop, but more of that later. This has turned into rather an epic post so I think now is a good moment to pause. Workshop reviews coming soon.