So. Sock Summit.

Sock Summit was pretty much everything that I might have hoped for. Amazing people. Fabulous yarns. Outstanding classes. Voodoo doughnuts. I have to say I hated the lighting in the convention center – a migraine inducing set of yellowish fluorescents that had me on a steady dose of Imitrex, leaving me pretty loopy a lot of the time. Yech.

It was almost too much to believe at times. Barbara Walker is likely one of the most amazing people I've had the privilege to listen to. Tina Newton and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee cemented their statuses as goddesses in my book.

Parts of the trip were lonely and sad though. All of my stupid insecurities came screaming to the forefront, leading me to babbling like an idiot trying desperately to fit in and be liked. And failing miserably. I'm such a dork! In spite of myself I managed to make a few new friends and I hope to see some of them again. I wish I'd taken better pictures of them, but every last one is blurry.

The Ravelry party was big fun and I was glad I made myself go when what I really wanted to do was to hide in my hotel room. They handed out a really nice swag bag full of goodies!

I didn't have any particular shopping list and so I bought the things that really called to me. I blame the combination of Imitrex and wool fumes. But I'm not saying sorry ;-) It was really hard – there were so many beautiful hand dyes there and I have a long list of vendors I want to purchase from in the future.

All of these pretties make me happy! It is really hard to pick out a favorite from these… I was tickled to find a vendor who was selling items from her stash and purchased a skein of Kauni yarn that is bigger than my head and a skein of a beautiful lavender lace weight – each for $10.00.

At every fiber event I've gone to there is always one particular yarn that captures my heart and I find myself going back to that booth in a vain attempt to talk myself out of buying it. This time it was the gorgeous skein of pink/ grey/lavender colorway called Sakura from Wool Candy, shown in the left photo above, second from the left. Next to it are two skeins of Bugga! which was crazy popular and sold out in minutes. Of course I couldn't leave without my Blue Moon fix either!