Just got back from Michael's yarn "event"

I went to the yarn "event" that Michael's Crafts had. It wasnt too bad. Sat and watched the fastest knitter contest...they had two adult women, and one little boy (the boy was probably only 7yrs old) One of the women won...the little boy came in second. He looked disappointed that they didnt have any second place prizes.

I signed up for the fastest crochet contest. They gave us Caron Simply Soft (I think) and said we could use our own hooks (thank goodness! they were going to make me use a Boye hook! ewww!) So I whipped out my trusty Susan Bates "J" hook. They had us chain 20 and then we sat and did single crochet for 10 minutes. There was only three of us. My hands shook for the first couple of minutes because I dont react well to being in front of a bunch of people, but that went away after a few minutes. I came in second. About 5 stitches behind one of the other girls. I had almost exactly 16 rows. I was one stitch short of exactly 16 rows...the girl next to me had 14 rows, and the girl who won was only 5 stitches ahead of me.

I probably could have contested the results, because I looked at the swatch that the girl who won did, hers was full of skipped stitches and split stitches, and it was curling in on itself and getting narrower (apparently she forgot to chain 1 at the end of each row) I decided not to complain, because the prize was a skein of some fuzzy mohair yarn and a scarf pattern. So I just decided that it was fun to do, and I came in second which is still pretty good. It still would have been cool to be the fastest, but it's not like I was competing against Lisa Gentry (the fastest crocheter in the world according to Guinness) or Lily Chin (who *thinks* she's the fastest...she never actually came close, but the CGOA still claims she's the fastest) The girl who won the contest looked pretty thrilled to have won, and I saw her in the back later going thru the yarn bins trying to find a few more skeins that were the same dye lot as the skein she won. Didnt look like she was able to find any.

I think I had more fun watching the 7yr old boy trying his hardest to be the fastest knitter... I felt bad that he didnt win

After the crochet contest was over, I went back to the yarn department and picked out a nice pattern book and used the 40% off coupon I got out of todays newspaper to buy it. ($1.93 for a pattern book! yay!)

I'm always happy to add to my pattern stash, and I really like it when I dont need to pay full price for the pattern. The book I got had 3 patterns for Pineapple baby afghans. I'd been looking at getting it for awhile. Later this week I'll probably head over to Hobby Lobby to get some Red Heart yarn (it's on sale!)