Stitches Report, Part 1

There are several reasons why I have been absent lately, the most important of which is that I've been to Stitches Midwest. If you've never been, I can only say that it is awesome. (Dad hates that word, but in this case it's the truth.) There are four days of classes, lessons, fashion shows, and ... The Market. In years past I have attended everything that I could cram into the weekend. This year I had decided ahead of time that I was just going to shop at the market and skip the rest of the proceedings. Then fate stepped in. At our last guild meeting the woman who runs Athena asked if anyone would like to volunteer to help direct people to where they need to be, make sure the coffee breaks run smoothly, etc. I volunteered, and boy was I glad I did. Here's how things went:



This is what I saw as I was pulling up to the convention center. Notice the long line of people waiting to get in. Knitters are SO cool, right? Now once I got inside I was assigned the job of directing the people coming in from the parking garage walkway to wherever they needed to be. Some people were checking in for classes that they had registered for, some people were just there for shopping, and some people

were obviously there for some other reason. It turns out our convention was on the second floor of the convention center, while the Wizard World convention was on the first floor. On Saturday they had their costume contest and I saw a great many unusual people passing by me. I entertained myself by playing "Which convention is he/she going to?" You'd be surprised how many I got wrong. It was also interesting to note the reactions of people as they came up the ramp and saw all of the Stitches signs (the Wizard World people had no signs on the second floor, which seems like a bad idea to me since that's where all of the people coming from the parking garage came in.) Some were interested, some looked kind of confused, many parents tried to panic their children (are you ready to go to the knitting convention?) and some smarties made rather condescending remarks about knitting in general. I was tempted to ask these last how many people they would be able to keep warm in the cold Chicago winter with their comic books, but I was able to resist. After my shift was over and I went to shop in the market I saw several people wearing Wizard World badges shopping as well. I think there's room in the world for knitters and wizards to get along, right?

Coming up tomorow, my marketpalce loot. Stay tuned.