Day 1 of Madrona and it was fabulous!

 Day 1 of Madrona is exactly what I expected ----tons of yarn, crowds of ladies wearing their favorite sweater, shawl or scarf and lots of oohhing and aahhing. 


My knitting gals and I love to carpool over and convince one another to buy buy buy whether we need it or not.  We're good at debating over which color looks best on who and what gadgets are a must.  We just like to spend each others money!  There is always one in our group that is easy to persuade and there is always the other one that needs a ton of convincing (that would be me!).  Then there is the one that knows exactly what she wants and she needs no help from anyone! Lastly - there is the one that doesn't think she's capable of knitting this or that and we spend the next hour convincing her that her knitting skills are much higher than she thinks they are!  Sadly - our 5th friend was busy volunteering at the elementary school and missed out on all of the fun!


So - my big purchase was this new yarn (or at least I have never seen it before).  The booth was Angora Vally Fibers & Fly Designs (www.angoravalley.com) out of Tenino, WA.  They had a bunch of machine knit socks and fingerless gloves knit up in this up in this felted Possum yarn.  Supposedly, the more you machine wash it (lay out to dry) - the fuzzier and softer it gets.  The socks were amazing and I couldn't stop looking at them.  So here's the details:
30% New Zealand Possum
50% Merino Wool
20% Nylon
525 yds at 100 grams for $25.00.  Enough to make a pair of socks. 

My other purchase - (don't worry, I still have 1/2 day classes on Friday and Saturday with time to shop some more!) were these stunning buttons from Black Water Abbey (www.abbeyyarns.com).  Now - I wasn't the first to see them - my girlfriend was.  My girlfriend has great taste by the way so when she slipped them back onto the rack - I snatched them up!  It was the last set too!  They say that they are Vintage Vegetable Ivory - whatever that means.  As a vegetarian, that means to me that no elephant was killed during the making of these Ivory buttons!  They are just stunning and I'm sure that I can find the perfect cardigan to go with these buttons.

After a grueling couple of hours of shopping - we headed to the Murano restaurant for some lunch.  It was delicious but the company was even better and we all walked away with some fabulous treasures!