I didn't have any classes at Madrona on the Friday, so it was a day to hang out, go around the marketplace, fondle fibre, and generally blow the budget. I did restrain myself on the fibre and yarn, but made up for it in bags and needles. First was the trip to the Tom Bihn store; they only have one and it was more or less on the way from where I was staying to Tacoma. Tom Bihn has a ton of useful bags; I could have got more but restrained myself to a small messenger bag that I use as a purse; they call it the small cafe bag.

Just the right size for my assorted bits and pieces, fits over my shoulder easily, and is hard-wearing.

For my knitting I treated myself to a Namaste pleather (i.e., fake leather) bag. I think I would have preferred the turquoise, but the stand at the marketplace only had green and pink and pink is Definitely Not My Colour. This is the Laguna in lime, it has lots of room for everything I need and enough pockets to keep things usefully separated without having too much choice to put things in.

I added to my collection of needles; after I frogged the tiger hat I decided that maybe some bamboo needles would be useful for colourwork, to help keep the stitches stretched the right amount on the needles. I also fondled some of the gorgeous glass needles and specialty wooden needles and crochet hooks (the ones from Asciano made out of rosewood were especially interesting) but ultimately couldn't justify the cost to myself. I noticed though that the most useful sizes were gone by Friday afternoon, so lots of other people obviously could.

It was fun sitting in the knitting area outside the marketplace, watching people carry out their bags of goodies and then dive back in for more; I got a certain amount of knitting done while chatting to people, talking about yarns and colour choices. I've decided I've got a reasonable eye for matching colours although I wouldn't call myself artistic; I often manage to come up with ideas for colours to go with some yarn that others might not think of but that seem to work. Mind you, it is hard with some of the multi-coloured yarns around, since what they look like in the skein and what they look like knitted up can be two quite different things.