Something I always enjoy at the conference is doing a little shopping (okay, maybe I should say a Lot). Though it can result in an interesting challenge for packing my suitcases to fly home. This year my time at the conference was book-ended with shopping.
Jan and I had decided, since we were driving up to Manchester from her home in New Jersey, we should figure out a way to go visit WEBS during our trip. Usually Wednesday is Professional Development Day, this year there were other events happening, but we decided to spend our Wednesday at WEBS.
If you’ve never heard of WEBS, you can check out their website at www.yarn.com. They have great yarns and wonderful sales on yarns, as well as a fabulous selection of tools.
Jan’s GPS took us on a interesting route to get there, but eventually we did make to our destination. I was having so much fun I didn’t really get much in the way of photos. We ate our lunch at a little picnic area that was across the parking lot from the store.
I exercised a bit of self-control shopping at WEBS because I knew that there would be lots of shopping to explore at the show as well. I did manage to find a few things I couldn’t live without. Some yarn, knitting needles, crochet hooks and point protectors for knitting needles.
Jan was very focused on getting yarn for particular projects she wanted to tackle and of course she added to her crochet hook collection.
Thursday evening was the market preview and I purchased a few things. These cute little sheep for my boys and a sheep pillow/pin-cushion for me.
Ellen Gormley was having a book-signing in the Crochetville booth so I purchased her latest book “Marvelous Crochet Motifs”. I really like that this book includes text and stitch diagrams for the instructions. There are 24 motifs and 24 half motifs, as well as pattern instructions for making 4 projects.
I spent most of the time at the preview saying “hi” to friends and exploring all the various booths with an eye toward serious shopping on Sunday. After all my classes and socializing of the previous 3 days, Sunday was my day to get down to some real shopping. As always, Jan was available to help me find everything I might have missed.
Our first stop of the day was to attend Mary Beth Temple’s demonstration of “Arm Knitting”. I managed to take this photo of her with her eyes closed, but it is so easy to arm knit, that you can do it with your eyes closed.
I purchased her book “Arm Knitting” from her booth. The book has clear instructions on how to arm-knit as well as 15 patterns for various fun projects.
Then Jan and I got down to some serious shopping. We both had things we had been looking at thru-out the market days and now it was time to make decisions. There were many booths with yarn, but it was a little harder to find things like hooks or buttons.
I did splurge on this 18 inch Tunisian hook, it’s a size N (10mm).
By the end of my shopping on Sunday I had a nice pile of yarn (plus I had Wednesday’s purchases).
There was also my new “Hooked for Life” bag, a few tools, buttons, beads and other miscellaneous goodies. The little sheep are missing from this photo because the boys would not return them to me for photography purposes.
There was some very nice yarn in my goodie bags from the show as well.
I’m looking forward to next summer’s conference in San Diego. I’m hoping with the show being on the West Coast we will be seeing some new vendors and fun stuff happening in the show marketplace.
Mamas2Hands 