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Chicago Yarn Crawl & Stitches Midwest

The Chicago Yarn Crawl kicked off on Friday night, and since this is the first year I've ever grabbed myself a passport and (sorta) participated, I decided to drop by Knit 1 on Friday night for their kick-off party and The Wool Dispensary trunk show. There are three exclusive colors that Sam created for the event, and I couldn't resist bringing home a skein of one of those colors, Vortex:


I have to admit that I'm not planning on getting a lot of stamps on my passport; there are 30 shops participating this year, many of which are in the suburbs and outlying areas. If you don't have a car (like me), it's not impossible to visit these shops, but it is definitely time-consuming once mass transit comes into play. For those of you who are more than ambitious than me, The Fiber Friend posted a handy guide to doing the Chicago Yarn Crawl without a car.

Stitches Midwest is happening next weekend, and I've decided not to go this year. The drive to Schaumburg just plan sucks, if I can speak frankly - and I live relatively close (i.e. the Northwest Side). While it's technically possible for me to take mass transit there - I could probably take the Blue Line to Rosemont and then grab a Pace bus to take me the rest of the way - it's just a little too time-consuming for me to justify spending the time and money.

I can't tell you how much I wish they'd still hold Stitches at the convention center that's right off the Rosemont Blue Line station as they did the first year I attended; it was pretty convenient for us city folk without a car, plus we shared the weekend with Wizard World, which was pretty perfect in terms of nerd worlds colliding.

To the good folks at Knitting Universe, please hear my plea: bring Stitches Midwest back to the Donald E. Stephens convention center! Til then, this car-free Chicago knitter will be sitting it out.

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