It Was All New to Me

They held a Stitch & Pitch at Nationals Park about a week ago and I missed it because it conflicted with DQ's dance recital. Gotta keep those priorities straight. It was quite a coincidence that the following week some friends of ours with really good season tickets invited us to be their guests.

We attended the game last Friday night and had so much fun. It was our first game at the new ballpark and the stadium is really nice. It's open and airy with a cool new screen, not that we needed it since we were just a few rows behind the visiting teams dugout. The food was good (Ben's Chili Bowl) and best of all - the Nats won.



It was kind of touch and go before the game because they were predicting thundershowers. This complicated things for me just a bit because I had about 2 hours to kill before meeting DH and our friends at the stadium. Being a resourceful type, I looked up a LYS in DC that I'd never been to and decided to wait out the rain there since it wasn't too far from the game.

Stitch DC had been on my list of places to check out for a while but this was my first opportunity. It was quiet when got there so I was able to browse happily and chat with the staff. The yarn was very nice but, without a specific project in mind, I had to stick to sock yarn so I brought some Koigu in shades of light blue and pink home. Mostly, I just sat and knit. Sure enough, the downpour came with thunder and lightning and when it finally finished I walked over to meet everyone. It was perfect.

Also good was the other new LYS I visited this weekend. With Yarn in Front (no web site yet) is only 2 weeks old but it's already well on it's way to being a new favorite shop. It's got lot's of space, it's reasonably close and... it's got spinning stuff as well as a nice (and growing) selection of yarn. I got some Plymouth Happy Feet and some Fibranatura Yummy - neither of which I 'd seen before. Stinkerbelle gave it a thumbs up too because they've got and X-Box for the kids. Happy kids equals a happy shopping experience.

The yarn at With Yarn in Front was nice but I was most excited by the wheels. They don't have a huge variety of wheels or fiber yet but they did have a few Kromskis and I'd never tried one before. I didn't care for the Mazurka because it's a single treadle but the Minstrel was really nice. I treadled on that one for a while and I think I could get used to it although the look of the Sonata was more my style. The Sonata just felt weird to me.

The wheel I enjoyed most was not for sale though. It was a Jensen Tina that belonged to one of the owners. She was so nice and let me spin on it for a while and I have to say that I've never spun better, more consistently. I'm not sure if it was the wheel or the fiber but both felt so good in my hands. The wheel needed a bit of oil but even so - it was one very sweet wheel. It made me want to go home and spin, spin, spin... so I did.

All of these places were new to me and all of them are places I'd like to go again. So much fun!