What a busy day! I didn't sleep for crap last night, which I suppose figures after 13 hours of sleep previously, and also that's just me. I ended up giving up on sleeping, watching television, and finishing off the collar for the Isabela costume. I got some Dew later just in case, but I pretty much stayed awake all day.

I headed to Stitches. I note that today was the first day of the event, and during the day they only had 3 hour classes (one morning, one afternoon slot) and then three hours of the Market open for shopping. This definitely had A Small Crowd of people on this day, but it was kind of peaceful and chill, for sure.

I wore this outfit and it was absolutely loved and complimented and photographed by a whole lot of people. One even called it "yarn wizard." I'm glad I wore it. I met a few people from other states I've only met online while there--Benjamin the owner photographed me and Xandy the instructor said I should wear it in a show. We had a nice chat on during break--they were heading to their hotel room with a migraine at the time. I saw them again later and asked how they were doing and they said much better, and thanked me for keeping them company/functional enough to make it to the hotel. Yay! I also note that in the daily email about the event, Benjamin was all "I'm going to report on what Rick" (another instructor, also "met" on Zoom but haven't really interacted before) "is wearing every day in this." I first spotted Rick early in the day looking quite grungy (other than silver shoes, he just had on regular black T and pants) and was confused, but I saw him later in a very nice striped vest that looked like something I'd make. We waved a few times.

I did kind of have concerns about my outfit itself, because once I had the phone in my skirt pocket for awhile I started wondering if I'd stretched it SO much it was going longer than the skirt! I held on to it a bit more. I'm glad I wore it today on a low-walking day, just in case. I was a wee bit overheated--I was assuming I'd be somewhat cold while outside today, but nope. My shawl pin fell off but I thankfully found it again, whew. I left the sweater on all day because people were liking it SO much :) People love rainbows here! Will probably wear a different shade of rainbow tomorrow.

They didn't have any food other than Starbucks set up onsite today, but since I had a 1.5 hour lunch I'd planned to go out anyway. At lunch, after chatting with Xandy, I headed to Tony's Deli a few blocks away, looking for some kind of non-Subway sandwich shop. I enjoyed the place--I ended up ordering a second sandwich for tomorrow because Meg was all "oh, we'll bring sandwiches." There was a charming old man working there in a nice green Ralph Lauren shirt and tie (he got them separately and it was a coincidence, he told me) and green socks. He was quite friendly and chatting and hugged me a few times and said to come by again any time. He REALLY reminded me of Roger, to the point where I wished I could introduce them. Same kind of friendly, folksy charm dynamic going on. Adorable. It makes me want to look for some excuse to go back there again, albeit I may not have one for awhile.

I read "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" during breaks/lunch today and that book is very, very good. Albeit I note (spoiler alert) it's more like "The Seven Brief Husbands And One Long Term Girlfriend Of" (so not quite Elizabeth Taylor) and really reminded me of Angels in Riot Gear--need to tell Kelly about this one later. On a related note, I literally met a woman today named Elizabeth (Liz) Taylor. She said it was her married name and her husband talked about taking her name instead of like two seconds, and after the famous one died her daughter called up and said, "Well, you're still alive!"

As for the classes I did:

"The Knit NEWS Sweater" with Lily Chin. Lily Chin is a smartassed delight with a very interesting crocheted dress on. The "news" is standing for the different directions because it's a more freeform style of sweater in which you make a front panel and a back panel, then connect them together at the sides and knit them vertically (also same for sleeves) to make it look more slimming, and also uses up your random balls of "orphans and bastards" one-off balls you may get on sale at the yarn shop. We did a little sample piece sweater in class for practice. She also liked my outfit. I met some ladies in the registration line and they were all hyped to do class with her (again, I think) and they said she'd like it, and she did! Skirt with pockets in particular since she had one in her slideshow. I plan on using this with my one-off balls and other things I don't know what to do with.

Quotes from Lily:
"I'd rather cut off my left toe than do intarsia."
"You don't need no stinkin' patterns. This comes from someone who does patterns for a living."
"I want you to think of stitches as Danny DeVito, short and wide."
"You'll be happy to know I took my mic off in the bathroom."

The class in the afternoon was on pattern alteration and how to deal with your gauge not matching the pattern and different methods of conversion. I say this as a math idiot: Kira K (Dulaney) was very good at breaking this down without making it too horrifyingly scary. She actually made the math pretty simple, go figure.

Now, the reason why I was taking this class was because a few years ago I bought a dress pattern that was supposed to be a nice sheath dress out of fingering yarn that you could use different yarns in, BUT upon having bought it, it turned out that the gauge was extremely drastically off. I'm trying to think how to explain this to non-yarnies... gauge is essentially "I'm creating a sample square of fabric and trying to knit a 4 inch by 4 inch square to be sure that I'm making this garment in the right size," and the pattern will have a certain size of yarn being used. Like most of what I do is in worsted weight yarn, which is the size of your average skein of Red Heart or whatever that everyone's seen. Most of what is sold at fancy ass yarn stores/Stitches is fingering yarn, which is a lot thinner and usually used for socks/shawls. I note that I have a pretty standardized gauge and usually get something like, I dunno, 20-22 stitches to 4 inches with worsted (size 4) yarn and around 28 stitches to 4 inches with fingering (size 2). This pattern was specifically said to be for fingering yarn, not doubled or anything, but the gauge was 22 stitches to 4 inches--basically a worsted weight gauge for fingering. I'm not a math expert, but this really doesn't make any sense. Like there's no way in fuckall you can get the right size for this with tiny yarn and tiny needles. For YEARS I have been all, "what the fuck IS this and how do I change it."

Well, during a class break I started griping with a few other ladies who had the same problem with other patterns and also agreed with me, "this is worsted sizing!" I got up the nerve to ask Kira during question time about this, and she said....basically, some people apparently think the yarn size is something different (I think this was polite phrasing for "this person is nuts"). I felt better knowing that this was vetted and not so effing crazy as I've felt for years, and the others agreed with me.

And they opened the market at 5 p.m. I am out of energy now, but I bought a ton of stickers and some "I'm the rainbow sheep of the family" socks (plus a rainbow sheep pin) and took pictures of all the yarn for tomorrow.

I restrained myself from buying yarn on this day, I took pictures of the yarn I was interested in so I could go home, check the stash I currently have, and not go rebuy more of that. I did buy a bunch of stickers, though. (Very cute ones.) And socks that said "I'm the rainbow sheep of the family," which is obviously accurate.

I left around sevenish, very tired, then went home and checked the stashes and whatnot, wrote down what I've already got and photographed it.

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