We were certainly out and we brought our knitting with us. There were tons of knitters at South Station on Sunday and just an obscene amount of knitting-in-public! Obscene in a good way, of course. Overall, however, I would only rate the Knit Out a 3 out of 5 (that's how I filled out the little comments sheet), and here's why.

The space was just too small. South Station is not the location for this event. Maybe if half the people came they would have fit, but Boston's got a buttload of knitters and we were really herded in there like cattle. Boston also has an amazing number of knitting shops, each of which was only given a teensy space smaller than my computer desk to display stuff. I didn't get to look at the shop displays until about 4pm after most of the crowd had left. There were also some demonstration tables, but because of the herding phenomenon, I could only see the backs of other peoples heads as I was forced to keep moving. Ditto for the fashion show. I saw the woman describing the sweaters. From what she said, I imagine that they looked very nice.

There was no selling. I knew this before the event, so I wasn't expecting to buy anything, but man didn't realize I'd miss it so much. Browsing not just my local yarn store, but all of the yarn stores from the Boston area and not buying anything. Very depressing.

No Show and Share. This was the part I was most looking forward to. What I love most about my knitting group and reading knitting blogs is seeing what other people are knitting and hearing how it's going, what they're doing or changing, whether they love it or hate it, etc. There were two Show and Shares scheduled, but they never announced anything about it and nothing happened at the stage area at those times. I am totally bummin' about that.

OK, on to the good stuff. Kaffe Fassett was there and he seemed pretty cool. He even modelled a few sweaters in the fashion show. Other great designers were also there, like Jil Eaton. I don't really get the autograph thing though. I mean a writer's signature maybe. Writing is what they are famous for. Or someone like Abraham Lincoln who changed the world, but a knitwear designer? For that matter, a football player? Nope, don't get it. But I was glad to see designers come out and support a local gathering like this. They encourage us to make fabulous things and we can encourage them to keep inventing amazing stuff for us to make.

Prizes were raffled off. I loves me a good raffle. Two of our Knitsmithers even won gift certificates. Not me, but I got to run up and pretend I won, since one of the girls had to leave early. So that was almost as good!

I think that the best thing was just seeing all those knitters sitting around together and knitting or chatting about their sweaters (both those on the needles and those on their backs). I saw some beautiful sweaters there that were really impressive and inspiring. The atmosphere was just wonderful. It was in a sense a Show and Share all day long. Check out some photos from the event. (Note: Due to a rather Humpty Dumpty like fall, my camera is dying. The poor thing lost a few of the pictures and some of the rest are mighty blurry. Sorry!)

If I were expecting to be able to go to Stitches East, I'm sure I could have enjoyed the Knit Out for what it was, but with the babies and all, there's no way I could do an out of town/overnight convention. So, I'm a little disappointed, but I'm very glad I got to go. After all, knitting at home or at knitting group is really nice, but it's always more fun to knit out.