Northampton

Okay, I wrote a long post at the Travels with Swatchy blog, and now it's time to add some more over here. (There's a bit of overlap, but the two posts are different.)

The closing for J's house was Friday, so he had to miss the first bit, and I drove up in his car with B.

B was quite quiet and withdrawn when I first met him, but he's really opened up as I've gotten to know him. We get along splendidly. ;) He's not what you'd expect from his looks... he crochets, photographs flowers, and draws. I've promised to bring in my spindle to show him spinning.

On the drive up we stopped in a small town in CT for lunch. Um... methinks the folks around there are rich. After looking at a few places where the menus listed entrees in the $20 range, we found "Joe's Pizzeria". Perfect! Cheap food for the frugal. :) On the way in we saw a needleworking shop and a cool toy shop that looked like fun to stop at, but I didn't know B well enough at that point to realize he was serious when he said he was interested too. On the way out, I remembered but didn't say anything, and B forgot. Oh well... live and learn.

Webs


Wow. Webs is *huge*. Amazing. Stunning. Words cannot describe. (At least, not fully by me.) I managed to visit without buying anything, but only because I wanted to buy so much, I couldn't decide! I think this will make a lovely comfortable sweater:

I took a photo because I've been wanting to knit a terrycloth-like sweater, and I think this will do the trick. (Damn! I see it's on sale now for an even better price!) I also fondled all the Cascade 220 colours, and I think I want to go with a Quattro for The Perfect Sweater. However, I can't decide which one. (Interesting... they have a lot more colours of Quattro in-store than they do online. I thought I saw more than I expected! However they do have the green online, which was lovely.) *sigh*... I want to go back!!! I got to browse for about two hours, and that wasn't nearly long enough!

I spotted a felted fish at Webs:

I was wondering how big those were. They look so small (adorably so) in photos, but are quite large in real life.

Funny story: someone was trying to learn to crochet flat circles (well, and apparently even just how to crochet!) and another girl found a book, and the third found the page with the description. She read out that you increase a constant number of stitches per round. I couldn't resist... I poked my head over the shelf (which was low at that point) and said "that's because the circumference increases linearly with the radius!" I got some "gah! math!" looks from that, but did help them out. I showed them Donna's "magic loop" method which is much better than a starting chain for crochet in the round.

Webs was so awesome... I could have spent *hours* there. Well, I did spend about two hours, and it wasn't enough. Let me rephrase... I could spend *days* there!

Workshop



The workshop was great, as usual. It's so great to see everyone, and I met someone who is really interested in what I'm doing, and gave me some great references.

I saw this slide, and had to take a photo to show you the type of fun stuff we geometers do research on:

Don't worry... the talk had serious stuff too:


Smith College

Smith is a lovely campus. I pretty much forgot to take photos. Here's one of an orchid in the botanical garden greenhouse:


Random Shop

Northampton is filled with quirky little shops. Like this glass shop:

It had more than just glass:

(I want to make one of those!) I love this chandelier:

So fun and funky!

Northampton Wools

At first I couldn't understand how a little yarn shop could compete being so close to Webs... but then I understood when I went inside. It was awesome, and *comfey*!


I didn't escape without some loot:

A mini crochet hook for picking up dropped stitches (methinks that's going in my next sock knitting travel bag!), a spare E hook (I've been meaning to replace my spare which I gave away, but kept forgetting whenever I was in Ram Wools), and gorgeous bamboo cable stitch holders. Happy, *happy* me!

Signs



J's comment was something like "and the rest of the state isn't?"

Random Building

For some reason, I felt like taking a photo of this random building undergoing renovations:

I have no idea why I didn't stand so the sign wasn't in the way, or even why I wanted to photograph this building. But now I'm sharing it with you. I find it somehow a compelling photo. Probably because it's kind of bizarrely bad.

Hotel

We booked rather last minute, and so the nearby reasonable hotels were all taken. We found one in CT that was only supposed to be 20 miles away, but I'm pretty sure was rather more. Something like 30, by the trip odometer.


Return Trip

The return trip had a scary moment: we barely missed a tire that escaped someone on the side of the highway! Yikes!

I'm sure there's a ton more I meant to post, but have now forgotten. However, this post is already pretty long. See the Swatchy post for even more details!