Had a couple girlfriends over the other night for some beading and hanging out. Julia brought homemade tiramisu (sorry, no pictures, all happily gobbled up), and Rosanne brought yummy cookies. Aren’t they too pretty to eat??

Made myself a pair of cluster earrings. Didn’t have headpins on me, so I went creative and put little spirals on the ends of the wire (click for a close-up)

I’m totally wearing these today, and very proud of it. =)

I baked dark chocolate cupcakes the other day. Cupcakes are great for any kind of celebration, don’t you think? They came out SO perfectly smooth and pretty. I didn’t have time to make my own frosting, but then again, the cupcakes weren’t exactly from scratch either (hint: Williams Sonoma’s Sprinkles).

All frosted:

And ready to go!
(ETA: container is Wilton’s Cupcake Heaven Boxes)

Birthday wishes to two good friends – both knitters! (Yay for Cindy being converted!) =)

Beware, this is a somewhat picture-heavy post. =)

I’d say, half the fun was the Stitch ‘n Ride train ride itself. I didn’t get a snapshot of the goody bag that each of us got, but let’s say we were all very impressed by it. =) We were even interviewed by a local paper and got our SnB group pictures taken and everything. So that was fun!

This is how crowded the Market was. Sometimes it was hard to get around because of the sheer volume of people in each of the little booths.

Just a few of the MANY walls of yarn displayed:

Books (the line at the Webs booth was huge):

Alot of groups all over the country and Canada were there, as well as some well-known knitting personalities! I have to say, I’m a bit shy, so I didn’t really approach people… I always feel stupid about that since they must get alot of attention already as it is. I went by the Ravelry booth, and Jess and Casey were very very nice and down-to-earth.

Can you believe that wall is made up of THOUSANDS of Ravelry member avatars? People would stand in front of it, staring at it, looking for their own avatar (I didn’t even try).

There was also a knitting fashion show (runway and all), tons of spinning wheels, exotic yarns, exotic needles/tools, and everything in between. I thought one of the coolest parts of all was seeing everyone attending, who was wearing a knitted item. Almost everyone was wearing or displaying a knitted piece, and in a crowd, you can easily pick out a handful of knitted items of patterns that you’ve seen online, in a magazine, or wherever. And that was pretty awesome. Everyone’s stuff looked great!!

We got back on the train go back home – and share in all the bounty we had purchased. I held myself pretty well and didn’t spend more than $200. Others, well, I can’t speak for everyone else, but some went all out, and I’m sure some stashes were increased twice over if not more. I’ll leave you with a final picture – one of my favorites of the day.

Angela, sniffing some of Cheri’s yarn:

=)