Wednesday was a 22-hour day for me. 22 hours spent awake and active, that is. I couldn't get back to sleep after waking up at 5:30am, so I did the chores that needed to be done (like laundry so I could finish packing) and knit until it was time to go to the airport around 4pm. Then I spent roughly nine hours enjoying the hospitality of American Airlines. I discovered that it's difficult for me to sleep sitting up, especially when the 5-year-old in front of me has a cold with a horrible cough. Poor kid. I also realized that the only thing I really like about DFW is the skyway/monorail. Doors are closing. Do not block the doors.
By the time I got to Portland, picked up my rental car, and got to the hotel, it was 12:30am local time. That's 3:30am Eastern time. David caught me as I stumbled into the room, took off my shoes for me, and tucked me in. Eight hours later I was still a little jet-lagged, but was awake enough to get us to the IHOP down the street for an energizing breakfast. Then began the yarn crawl.
Thursday was spent downtown, where we hit three yarn stores and had the best sandwiches ever. Our first stop was the Dublin Bay Knitting Company. It's spacious and beautiful, and I got a hank of fingering weight merino/bamboo/nylon that's just dreamy. Next was Knit/Purl with its gorgeous selection and motorized ball winder. I mentioned to David that there was one good thing about not having set a yarn budget for this trip... I wouldn't feel guilty for exceeding it. I ended up with two hanks of ShibuiKnits sock yarn, a hank of Baby Alpaca DK (with more dark tones than the picture shows) that matches my current unnatural hair color, and a set of Crystal Palace bamboo US#1 DPNs for the sock yarn. One last fibery stop at the very compact Knit Knot Studio (which didn't have anything that cried out to be taken home with me), and then it was time for lunch.
Not being familiar with the city, we picked the first place that looked promising: Kenny & Zuke's. It turned out to be an excellent choice. Neither David nor I could finish our sandwiches (his: pastrami; mine: corned beef reuben), and we had the leftovers for dinner last night. Nom, nom, nom.
Yesterday we met up with Cari (and Thumper) at Tandem Coffeehouse, which has the best peppermint milkshake I've ever had. Okay, the only peppermint milkshake I've ever had, but still very, very yummy. Cari insisted that we make Twisted part of our yarn crawl, so after Cari took Thumper home for his nap, that's what we did.
Twisted has a wall of sock yarn. A wall. I picked out a hank of Ashabee's Fiber Oasis sport weight merino in a colorway called "Clown Wig" and then wandered around the rest of the store and found a hank of Baby Lace Weight in "Cloud Jungle" from Dream In Color. After a delicious lunch at Thai Pod (recommended by the ladies at Twisted) we stopped at Close Knit, another very compact shop where nothing really jumped out at me. Our last stop was The Naked Sheep Knit Shop. I couldn't walk away from a hank of Spinnemann sport weight wool in a stormy grey.
I still need to figure out how I'm going to fit all of the yarn in my suitcase. I'm worried that my eyes are bigger than my luggage. Passing off the wedding gifts to the happy couple in a few hours will free up a little space, but it's still going to be a tight squeeze.
I keep forgetting to take pictures, so any photos from the trip will appear on David's blog as soon as he gets around to posting them. See y'all when I get back to the east coast!
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