VKL Seattle!

Last weekend, the whole team was in Seattle for Vogue Knitting Live.

I have feelings about the Pacific Northwest. Strong feelings. Happy, love-y, enamored feelings. So, of course, I had been looking forward to this trip for months.  Spoiler: it did not disappoint!

It began with a road trip Lauren and I made down to see the awesome ladies at Twisted in Portland, Oregon.

The ride was beautiful. We passed through sunny fields dotted with the pink of cherry blossoms, and many (massive!) piles of fresh-cut timber. It was everything I expected it to be, and more.

Like the ride down, Twisted was everything I would have imagined a Portland yarn store to be: friendly & quirky, with a circle of super comfy squishy couches, and walls filled with some pretty spectacular yarn. I promise I will tell you so much more about Twisted (and the other CustomFit LYSes) in a future post! For now, suffice it to say that when we arrived Megan hand-prepared exquisite loose-leaf tea bags for us, and when we left there was a rather large group of knitters gathered round the comfy couches having a grand old time. Even though I was headed back to Seattle for VKL, I really didn’t want to leave. It was apparent that everyone there was really happy to be there, you know?

I am about to share an embarrassing (to me) photo with you. Do not let this picture deceive you:  these ladies are super fun & awesome, and I am stupid awkward in front of cameras. I don’t know why it looks like I’m afraid to touch people!

From left to right: Shannon, Me, Emily, Kat. All the people who know what to do with their arms are from Twisted.

We made our way back to Seattle (Bellevue, really) and the rest of the weekend was much as you’d expect. Amy taught pretty much non-stop:

In between a bevy of meetings, I had a wonderful time browsing the marketplace, and admiring well-designed booths. (I have SO MUCH MORE appreciation for the art of a well designed booth, having done a couple ourselves now.)  We snapped a picture of the Stash booth with Liz, who has made a gorgeous Birch Bark using CustomFit:

Lauren shared her own LYS with us, and got to play hostess and tour guide more than once over the course of the weekend.

I learned that, in Seattle, hats/coats are the preferred rain-gear of choice (not umbrellas), and I cast on for Cardipalooza Saturday evening at a lovely wine bar, rather, um, damp all over, because I had neither.

Not pictured: Any of us, because we bore an unfortunate resemblance to drowned rats.

Lauren cranked out half of a sweater, using the Plucky she nabbed at Stitches West:

And one of Amy’s students anonymously left carefully wrapped packages for us, containing these:

I don’t know which kind soul left these, but those smoked salted caramels were transcendent. Thank you.

See what I mean?  The Pacific Northwest, and the knitters there (and the yarn stores there!) are like that… a little better than you even expect. (And we were expecting awesome.) I don’t know how anyone could go there and not fall in love with it!