west coast swing!

I’m back from the west coast - that 3 hour time difference is a bit of a deal, but I survived. Pacifically Passap Plus was great! Thank you, Pat and crew, for allowing us ‘flat-bedders’ to come to your party! There were familiar, friendly faces but most importantly, there were new, young faces!! I was so pumped! Hi to Irina and her red-head friend (sorry, I didn’t catch your name), Melissa (31 yrs young!!!!!), Anne, Norene, and Jodi  and the others - it was a pleasure to meet you all - hope I was able to properly inspire you to keep machine knitting!

Leaving Thunder Bay, it was quite chilly - right on the freezing point - in fact they had to de-ice the plane - I thought my season of wearing ‘In the Tweeds’ was over, but I put it on to get to the airport, thinking I’d leave it in the car - my suitcase was already overfull. At the airport, it was still pretty chilly, so I kept it and thankfully so - I wore it in Vancouver, I wore it on the drive to Portland - we stopped on the other side of Seattle and visited with Morgan Hicks and I got to see his store - All Points Yarn in Des Moines, WA (http://www.allpointsyarn.com/). A great place and, the yarn!! wow - if you’re in the area, it’s a must-stop! Morgan is very knowledgeable about yarns, mk-ing, hand knitting and crochet - he is so enthusiastic and inspiring to talk to! And Morgan, even though you spelled my name wrong, I still love ya!
My free day in Van was spent window shopping on Granville - one of my favourite things to do - it’s a great mix of high-end and really high-end retail and I get a chance to check out the good stuff and get tons of ideas of things to try - I made little notes and then emailed it to myself so I wouldn’t forget by the time I got back home - they may not make any sense to you, but I can picture the garments from reading my notes:
things i saw on granville st:
-very loose knit, vee at hem, like shortrowed to a point, tension changes, very loose, transferred to make big holes then brought back to work and knit tighter
-open front cardigan hoodie in Lucky Jeans - mesh knit like 'spots in dots' without the spots - very lightweight cotton.
-open cardigan, knit in rayon - bands of stripes created with say 20 rows of 1X1 eng rib so it was vertical looking then transfer all to MB and do a slip & tuck stitch???
-battenburg-look lace work and tons of white cotton eyelet looks.
I did buy a hoodie at Lucky Jeans, with full intentions of giving it to my daughter but what can I say? it was cold and I needed something other than ‘in the tweeds’ - it has this really cool open work on the sleeves - a combination of devoré and maybe battenburg - a knitter came up to me in Portland wanting to know if I had knit it - I told her I’m going to find a way to get the look of it with knitting - I was daydreaming about it on the long plane trip home, dying to get to my machine and make a swatch or two - lots of ideas - I’ll keep you posted!