Yarn is Treasure. Treasure is worth more than Money. Yarn is worth more than Money.
Trade all your Money for Yarn.

It’s like that. The Yarn Market at Stitches is colossal – vast, abundant, a festival of color. There are some 250 vendors. It is overwhelming, intoxicating. And everywhere are kind and enthusiastic fiber-lovers who want you to take some of this amazing treasure home with you. Yeah, it’s like that.

Before we went to Stitches this year, Sarah reminded me that the first year we went to the Yarn Market I had wanted to cry – the joy, the beauty, the unbearable choices. I nodded. Perhaps I had been struck so, being new to this sort of thing. Now, in my third Stitches experience, I would approach the Yarn Market in a sophisticated, rational way. I had a list. I would be appreciative, but focused.

Half-way into the Market that first night, I wanted to cry – the joy, the beauty, the unbearable choices! Sarah had to hold my hand (and hiss “Chill, Mère!” in my ear), but her eyes (and appetite!) were as wide as mine. Oh, yes, it was like that. We petted and admired and ogled and laughed aloud. Reverent toward the thousand manifestations of wool, giddy over shimmering and glinting yarns, swoony over the silks. I get fired up over slubby yarns and flagrant textures — the unspun mohair locks pretty much put me over the edge. Sarah melts over soft yarns and haloes and delights in anything whimsical – which explains the knit-a-viking-helmet kit to fit her son, Max. Together, I think we would follow some colors to the ends of the earth.

We visited the Market daily (okay, usually twice a day – during our lunch break and after classes in the afternoon). We did carry a list since we had some specific quests, but it was constantly amended as we built projects in our minds, decided that I really did need to bring some qiviuk (the gourmet-est of gourmet yarns) this time, remembered a friend who would love a gift of yarn, etc. We befriended both vendors and fibers indiscriminately and, of course, spent more money than we intended (yarn is treasure, after all).

I confess that I “lost it” completely over a skein of turquoise Blue Moon silk. It had the most glorious aroma and I bought it almost without reason (though it did go perfectly with the wild variegated thick-and-thin New Zealand wool and emerald mohair locks I had in my bag). I snuffled it shamelessly (“Chill, Mère!”) in the Market. I slept with it that night. It was the first time I have ever actually slept with a skein of yarn (it just smelled so heavenly…). I cannot swear to it (the hotel room was dark), but I think Sarah slept with her grass-green skein too. Oh, yes, it was like that.