Yarn Crawl Culmination! (with photos...yay photos!)

My total store from Fresh Purl's stuff-a-bag sale

All the goodies to choose from (minus what I took).

This is the front of the shop, and my buddy Heather at the register

Berroco Trunk show (the cover sweater for Norah's latest collection)

more samples from Berroco

I saw these coming up the stairs into the mill

Sereknitty Yarns booth

More from Berroco...I love the one on the right!

Beautiful hand-dyed yarns from a vendor who's card I totally forgot to grab (yikes!)

Ysolda!  She was totally sweet and agreed to pose for a blog photo, as well as autographing both copies of her Whimsical Little Knits series.

Mrs. McYarnpants!  Her trunk show was fabulous.  Heather bought her book, and I'm planning to steal it from her when she's not looking :)

The latest Berroco sample in Linsey.

Norah Gaughan's beautiful work for Berroco

A close up of Sereknity knits.  I purchased some roving in a shockingly beautiful blue/green/aqua, named after her daughter "Rebecca". 

The lovely proprietor of The Mermaid's Purl in North Kingstown, RI.  It's a beautiful little shop with equally beautiful yarns and really friendly, helpful staff.

Original designs by Lisa, made from upcycled clothing.

And here's the super talented Lisa with one of her original tops.  This photo doesn't do it justice.  It's much more fitted and pretty in person.

Reclaimed and recycled yarns by Lisa and friends

Plays at Life fibers by Chrystee.  I've got 6 skeins of her sock yarn right now and I'm test-knitting a sock pattern designed for her striping sock yarn.  I almost walked off with some of her sparkly batt.

 

Tracy, Chrystee, and Bernadette did a wonderful job pulling all of this together!  I haven't had this much fun since I went to Rhinebeck.  Correction.  I had more fun because I could go home to my own bed.  In total, Heather and I hit seven different stores, most of which we'd never been to before.  We met awesome people, and we has one group of women who we kept hitting the same shops with all day.  It was hilarious!  We'd show up first, and they'd be about 20 minutes behind us. 

Most shops had something different for everyone.  There were unusual yarns, wild novelty yarns, hardy 'outerwear' yarns, slinky cottons and silks, richly dyed yarns in all fiber types, and great deals everywhere we went.  All the shop owners were great, and they seemed to be having the time of their life.  It was really neat to see how the shops were a reflection of the women who owned them.  Cute and spunky, earthy and homey, wild and eclectic.  And get this!  At the Knitting Corner, in Middletown RI, I met the owner who recognized me from my ravelry photo (which is funny because that photo isn't of me at all...it's of Cam Saroyan from Bones).  When I explained that I moderate the Bones Fan Group, and that each moderator was assigned a Bones avatar, and that I got Cam because my name is...Cam, everyone had a good laugh.  So as I was checking out I provided my name 'Cam' and she said "is that like 'Cambria'?" and I said 'yes...'.  Then she said "like the designer?", and I said "YES!!", lol.  It's the first time anyone has ever said that, and it felt amazing!  It also felt really cool when we popped into Bella Yarns in the morning and ladies were checking out my kits, and Naomi introduced them to 'the designer', lol.  Wow. 

Well, I'm off to go tell my poor buddy Denise all about the Crawl, as she had to work the entire weekend.  See ya tomorrow with the rest of the story!