Well, I never expected to find myself a knitting group quite so far away but a trip to Minnesota was just where I found them! We fly from New York with the briefest of stops in Chicago in time to grab a sandwich before we were off again (we’re definitely going to stop in Chicago properly next time!) and soon enough we were landing in Minneapolis. It was just as we were landing at Minneapolis airport that I looked at pao and smiled saying hopefully those people I’d been in almost daily touch with wouldn’t turn out to be axe murderers.

It wasn’t hard to spot Eileen because she had the international flag of the knitblogger in her hands – a very beautiful looking sock so that was a good start. Eileen is an incredibly good sport and had volunteered us to our first B&B The Covington Inn.

She is forever a knitting heroine because not long after we’d arrived in St Paul, she pulled up outside Borealis Yarns 🙂 That is pretty good going as we’d been with Eileen about an hour at that point so I was highly up for some immediate corruption. Let me say that I came out of Borealis with a rather large bagful due to pao encouraging the ladies in the store to convince me to choose something else and he kept picking up balls of yarn and kept saying how nice they were. Eileen gave me the most amazing pair of foldupable scissors which are brilliant as they won’t poke a hole in me or my knitting bag. Amazingly, I managed to get these through several sets of airport security without forgetting to pack them in the hold luggage and they are now safely ensconced in my knitting bag! Hooray! Thank you, Eileen!

Finding our boat wasn’t without difficulty because the directions to it were a bit sketchy. We drove around Harriet Island a bit and eventually found someone to ask because my mobile was completely flat by then.

The boat was amazing and I immediately wished that I’d booked all three nights on there rather than just the one. That place is definitely on my must-do list for St Paul!

Our bed was amazing!

We had a couple of hours to chill out on the boat before Eileen and Scott came to pick us up for the party at Jeanne’s house. We had a blast – it was great to sit around chatting with everyone in Jeanne’s beautiful garden surrounded by her gorgeous cats.

Doesn’t pao look right at home?

I was chuffed to meet the famous Pirate and his wench 😉

I didn’t take many photos – just these two but pao will have taken loads more which I’m hoping he’ll show you. I was having too much fun knitting and chatting 🙂

Thank you so much to Jeanne and Michael for having us round their beautiful house! Thank you to Scott and Eileen for driving us! Thank you to Chris for the really lovely gift bag (I haven’t taken photos yet but I will) and for organising the blocking wires! We had a brilliant time with all of you 🙂

I got home earlier today – woohoo!

I think you’ve been enjoying the yarn-a-logue so I thought I’d tell you a bit about the yarn shops we visited.

First up was Purl which Lolly mentioned on her blog a while ago. We visited on a Sunday so it was a little hard to get around because the whole shop was full of ladies and pao! I was bemused to be taken to one side and told about some other yarn shops by another customer in a very conspiratorial air when she realised I was visiting.

I fondled a lot of Malabrigo and Rio de la Plata but mostly settled on a few skeins of Koigu (KKPM and Kersti) and some Alchemy Yarn which was on sale.

I liked the range that Purl has but it was difficult to choose because there wasn’t a lot of space to move around in. I suppose we could have gone another day but it wasn’t a big shop. The little sweaters by the door were extremely cute!

We then felt the need for tea so headed over to The Point which wasn’t too far away. The Point was much bigger and more enjoyable as we were able to sit down for a bit. Thank you, Obsidian Kitten for recommending The Point as it was fun to go and sit for a while and it is in the most amazingly lovely neighbourhood. There wasn’t a lot of stock in the shop which I couldn’t have gotten easily at home – I did fondle some lovely Sublime yarn and realised that it came from Wales.

They serve up very nice cakes in The Point. I was a little puzzled as we didn’t get any milk with our English Breakfast tea but it was just nice to have a cup of tea. We had had one of the horriblest cups of tea at the diner in the morning so the tea at the Point was much nicer.

The yarns were mostly in wire baskets which stretched right up to the ceiling which was quite fun. I just bought some cones of Habu in there because all the sock yarns I liked had only one 50g skein left.

I had planned to just go to the two yarn shops but we had to go over to Battery Park to see the lady in the harbour and I had realised that my precious Chibi needle was at home so we took a stroll in the Financial District and found Seaport Yarn. This was quite somewhere else.

We arrived at the address that was on the piece of paper that I’d compiled about yarn shops etc but thought it was strange because it looked just like an office building so we rechecked our address and it was right. I went in and asked the guy on the security desk if it was where Seaport Yarn was supposed to be. He told us it was and asked us to sign in. A little unusual for a yarn shopping experience.

Seaport Yarn was on the fifth floor of the building and to say it was like an Aladdin’s cave is a bit of an understatement. pao was shown to a comfortable leather sofa by Andrea whilst Margaret took me on a guided tour.

This is just the corridor! There were several large rooms filled with yarn and related items. It was incredible and very difficult to decide a small amount of stash to take away. I bought a lot of needles in there because they had lots of lovely different ones including square needles which I’m going to try soon!

This is Andrea – hi Andrea! We were highly amused because she also knows Nic who I met at knitting class (and I saw on Sunday). It really is a small world!

I am interupting the travelogue for today as we travelled to Romford to meet up with Nic and to meet up with some other knitbloggers including the very talented Kerrie from HipKnits. As the very lovely Deb is hosting a virtual happy hour competition, I thought that our afternoon knitting away in Starbucks might be a good entry.

We had a super time – Romford is just under an hour and a half away. We got there about midday so we had a quick look round Hobbycraft which had some very nice Sublime Yarn and I got some sunny yellow yarn for a baby kimono I’ve promised to make someone. We found the Starbucks we were meant to be at really easily and settled into some very comfy chairs and chatted and knitted and cooed over babies. A perfect happy hour on a Sunday afternoon 🙂

My photo of Nic and Pete isn’t very good but trust me – he is cute and destined to break many girl’s hearts!

I really enjoyed myself and was glad to meet up with poor Kerrie who brought the yarn which I’d ordered a while ago for my trip but due to the vagaries of Royal Mail has been returned to her twice and now has gone missing completely despite it being sent Special Delivery (e.g. guaranteed delivery with tracking). I have sort of dreaded mailing her to say that the package didn’t make it (again) so it was really nice to meet her and her family. It was also lovely to meet Lucy and chat yarn with her – I have tried to stay firm with myself and say I’m not going to Ally Pally this year as I have to be at lectures during the week and the weekend is usually pandemonium.

We had a pit stop at Bluewater so that the beleagured pao to get sustenance and for us to see if we could find any decent and cheap bookcases in John Lewis’ clearance sale. (No bookcases but yarn and sushi were purchased (partly with pao’s loyalty vouchers)). I think we are destined to take a trip to Ikea in the near future as we still have quite a few boxes we can’t unpack until we have bookcases and I would like to get the spare room sorted out.

Now I am home again and feeling a bit tired as I woke up in the middle of the night worried that I wouldn’t get the work I needed to do before Monday done in time. (I got up at 3.30am, did the work and then went back to sleep until 9 feeling a bit happier.) It’s the usual pre-term rush but what with a website upgrade happening last week which meant that I couldn’t do any updates until Friday evening at 5pm. I’ve got another couple of late finishes this week as some software was upgraded last week and all my documentation needs to be rewritten and screen shots redone – gah! I know I’ll be shattered by next weekend so I’d better make the most of my delicious Sunday evening of knittery tonight – so that leads me on nicely to my favourite knit spots which Monkee Maker wanted to see.

The lovely knitting bag gifted to me by Sarah when I saw her in Cape Cod will represent me 🙂 Thank you so much, Sarah! The other goodies which were inside the box bag will be revealed soon – I’m making you wait!

Joint top-favourite is our cherry red joyfulness in our lounge. I like the corner near the lamp best. The basket next to it has needles and yarn 🙂

This is also top favourite as it is in the corner of the dining room and if I open the window I can hear cricket being played on the green opposite. It is such a peaceful and lovely room 🙂

Yep, another sofa. We have a lot of chairs in the house now but sofas mean the cats can sprawl out next to me and the yarn has half a chance of not being pre-tasted. This sofa also has a beige cover which I like better but it is nice to have a change.

If I hadn’t been going to Romford, this is where I would have had the photo for the virtual happy hour taken. These are just really cheap chairs I got from Asdas but they are fairly comfortable (they seem to be stuffed with paper!) and they recline completely and don’t collapse when a cat jumps on me. I love our new garden even though I miss having grass. Patio seems a whole lot more easy to maintain especially now we’re students again.