Vogue Knitting

Although I have been home for several hours, I am still psyched from my afternoon at the Vogue Knitting Live conference. I know most of you are thinking- knitting conference, what's that? But trust me when I say it was fabulous!
There were sessions on topics like cabling, finishing techniques and lots of other knitting terminology you probably don't want to hear about. My friend and went to a session focused on knitting a beaded handbag. And while we are never going to knit a beaded handbag because the process is amazingly tedious, we did learn some great new techniques like provisionary cast-ons, adding beading to knitted projects and the three-needle bind-off.  Me being a nerd, I had read about all these techniques before but after seeing them demonstrated, all of  a sudden they made sense!
They also had a huge marketplace of yarnstores selling any kind of yarn you can imagine, as well as knitting needles, books and anything else a knitter could want. Walking through there, my friend and I were like kids in a candy store, fingering and feeling different skeins of yarn and thinking what we could make with them. My favorite items were the knitting kits different stores were selling. These are pre-assembled bags, which contain all the yarn and instructions necessary to make a specific project. The kits range in price from 30 dollars for a scarf or a simple child's sweater to $250 and up for high quality sweaters and blankets. Needless to say, I did not buy any of those high-end kits, though I did get some great superwash merino wool that is amazingly soft.
My friend and I were definitely amongst the younger people there. While everyone claims that knitting has become chic and trendy, it still does seem to be a field populated mostly by older people.
My husband often jokes around that when we got married, he would have never guessed that I would turn into a birth-obsessed knitter/ a knitting doula. Either way, neither of those things were on my radar screen almost seven years ago when I got married.
To be fair, though, I am only 27 now so it's not like I discovered these interests so late in life. And I hope to add lots of new interests and experiences to my repertoire over the next few years. After all, isn't life all about growing and changing in unexpected ways?
Do you knit or have any other crafty hobbies? Please share!