Stitches West 2016 Wrap-Up

In February, Sandy & I headed off to Stitches West in Santa Clara. We saw a LOT of fiber arts from knitting, to crochet, to felting. As always, there were a lot of very nerdy & geek themes abounding, like this felted R2D2 and Toothless dragon

And dinosaurs.

And Star Trek transporters.

I wore my 3-in-1 sweater from Atelier Alfa, which got a lot of compliments and knitters stopping me to ask WHAT sweater I was wearing.

During Stitches, I ran into Jasmin & Gigi from the Knitmore Girls podcast, who told me about the Podcast host meetup in the hotel bar. So, I went. And the bar was FULL of knitters, which was all kinds of awesome.

I met BostonJen from Down Cellar Studios, Twinset Jan from the Twinset podcast,  Jen from the Knitting Butterflies, Laura from the Knotty Girls Podcast,...and a whole slew of others.

In Stitches, they had an awesome design challenge for Knitted Knockers, an organization that knits breast prosthesis for women who have undergone mastectomies or other procedures to the breast (from their website).

A bunch of designers, such as Nicky Epstein, Lily Chin, all created knitted knockers. Some where true to life (kinda sorta)

While others were more ornately decorated.

It's a worthy cause, so please check out the link above!

Of course, Stitches is about the classes (which I didn't take) and the SHOPPING (which I DID do!) Because I had recently organized my Stash, I didn't feel like I needed much, but I did come away with some goodies.

I love hand-thrown mugs, especially one that has something to do with cats and yarn. (Plus it can hold about 12 oz of liquid).

I hit Miss Babs for some Yowza yarn (enough for a sweater) and discovered Sojourn -- a 65% cashmere & 35% silk blend, which I absolutely LOVE (more on that later....)

There might have been some self-striping yarn as well.

In addition, I picked up this special knitter edition pack, Knitters Against Swatches,  for the card game, Cards Against Humanity (CAH) from Slipped Stitch Studios. If you have played CAH, you should give it a try. The game is FOR adults, HAS R-rated language, can be quite "DIRTY", but is a helluva lot of FUN to play with the right people -- as their website says, "It's a card game for horrible people."

I can't wait to add this pack into the game and play with some fiber artists!

All-in-all, it was a most excellent time, and much shopping was had. I loved meeting all the new people and can't wait until next year.