Stitches, part 1 and fun surprises

First of all, oh my goodness - Stitches is great.  I loved every second of the 60 minutes or so I was there today.  I saw several people that I know, and I fully anticipate seeing them tomorrow when I go back.  Yes, I'm going back into the brier patch with my husband.  He's a love, and it's cool that he wants to go with me.  It's not just to go with me, which that's part of it, but he's also actually interested in some of the dyeing processes.  Anyway, I found what I was looking for my test knit:

This is a GORGEOUS shade of green - a true emerald color from Miss Babs.  If you're not familiar with her, like I wasn't until today, go check out her website.  Seriously - I'll wait.  Back?  Great.  She is a wonderful dyer and has the most beautiful colors.  This green is the exact shade I had in mind when I was thinking of doing this test knit in green.  So perfect, I couldn't resist.  It completely blew my budget in fact.  Oh well - I will have to knit what I have for the time being, and not spend any more until next month.  Hopefully.  In case you're wondering how bad the price is, or how badly I blew the budget, I will say that was ALL that I bought, and it was 4 skeins, and it's 560 yards per skein.  Here's a comparison for you:

On the left, Miss Babs.  On the right, Vintage.  So, 560 yards versus 220.  It's a huge difference.  In other news, I got my sporran from my swap partner on Ravelry.  It was fantastic:

There were two lovely bags (the red one and the black one), 3 patterns all with the theme of dragonflies, dark chocolate caramels and a dark chocolate bar, dark chocolate cherry tea and a tea diffuser, bamboo roving (how fun!) some notecards, a mug cozy and washcloth/pad for a tea pot, a pair of fingerless mitts, dragonfly stitch markers, blue scissors, a skein of Malabrigo and Metalico.  I think that's everything - it was all wrapped in lovely paper, which I'm saving and I'm sure you'll see in some craft project sometime later.

Another update for you:

This is the sock in Hermione's Everyday Sock pattern.  I love the yarn colors, but I don't know that the pattern is working.  Any thoughts?  Now I'm off to try my tea and knit my swatch.  Let me know what you're working on!