Knitting in the Shadows: Stitches Temptations ... Overcome with the help of THE PLAN

As I mentioned a post or two ago, I was traveling with the Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth this past weekend.

If you've been following me long, you probably already know that we went to Stitches Midwest. 'Cause, you know.... we do that.

This time, I actually eschewed classes (time and money constraints -- even though I was totally tempted by Franklin's offerings), and we just hit the Market, like the mad fiends that we are.

First off, I'd like to say that I am very proud of both of us. We were alarmingly well organized and (much to the dismay of the vendors I suppose) we were also quite restrained in our purchases.

Allow me to drag you along for a recap of our day. I'll skip the quest for coffee and breakfast (JAMBA!!) and get to the heart of the issue.

We arrived at the hotel at approximately 10:20 a.m. At this point classes are in full swing, and the Market has been open for twenty minutes. You can imagine the parking lot. (Hint - FULL). There was a blast from the past there for our visual enjoyment (with a promise of at least one familiar vendor inside):

And yes, that is the picture I took a couple of years ago -- the parking lot was full this time. But I still love that van.

Despite the somewhat late arrival, and the very full parking lot, we were able to get a space in the very first section righ near the door! Miracles! I love those.

We waved our pre-purchased tickets, and picked up the booklet that told us which booth was where -- and discovered (much to our glee) that one of our top priorities was the very first booth at the near end of one of the end rows! Off to Lost City Knits we went!

It was lovely to greet (and get hugs from) Denise. We would likely have bought out the booth, but we had a PLAN, and by gum we were going to stick to it.

Here's the plan:

1) Go through the entire market, from booth 901 (Lost City Knits) to 2??, (yeah, they had no 100 aisle -- go figure), by pausing at each booth as we walked up aisle 900, down aisle 800, up... down... etc.

2) For each booth containing a strong temptation, write down on a little list exactly what you're tempted by (Yarn name, color, etc) and the booth name and number.

3) Buy nothing on round one

4) At the end of the first pass, stop for lunch. Eat and go over the list.

5) Determine if anything we saw eliminated the need for anything we'd seen earlier.

6) Go BACK through the market, taking a second look at all the specific things that tempted us. Mark off those things that we now realize we can live without for a month or two -- and make note of the vendor's website in case we want it later.

7) Review the bidding, and go back for the stuff we really want -- and BUY it.

Are you ready for this? We actually stuck to the plan! There was only one minor deviation, which I'll tell you about in a future post.

By the time we hit Aisle 200 we were suffering a little bit of yarn overload, and a lot of hunger. So we took notes and went for lunch. I noted that there was some yarn this year previously available only from one vendor, but now also available at WEBS. Now, I prefer buying direct -- but available at WEBS means easy for me to find later. This is a good thing.

Round two was good. It let me to a better job of comparing some things that I was wanting for the same purpose. So in the end, I knew just what I wanted, and where I wanted to buy it.

Alas, by the time we had figured out WHAT we wanted at Lost City Knits, we'd lost out on color selection to other greedy knitters. This means that we're likely to be placing an order soon (so much for avoiding shipping costs - unless, of course, I spend enough.)

In the end, we took the full day, and came away with a slew of ideas, a bunch of notes for making future purchases to go with those ideas, and a little bit of yarn. I also collected a few hugs.

Comments

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Not that it matters that much, but I think that Lost City Knits offers free shipping if you spend more than $30? or $60? And I dare you to try to get away with ordering less than that. Especially since you're trying to tempt other people...

"I must hold on..and try to hang on..."

Posted by: Cgirl | August 16, 2012 at 03:05 PM