Clifden

TNNA Wrap-Up!

Whew, it’s been a hectic week. But I promised a TNNA wrap-up post, so here you go. :-)

We arrived in Columbus on Saturday morning and located the convention center. It’s huge inside, and luckily very well air-conditioned, because it was hot outside.

The show was movie-themed this year, so the entrance looked like this:

It wasn’t cool to take pictures of most of what was on the show floor (which makes sense, because a lot of companies promote new products at TNNA that aren’t ready for the public yet). But I did get a picture of my booth setup:

The other half of the booth was an overview of my print distributor, Stitch Sprouts. Isn’t it great??

I had a fantastic time meeting and networking with tons of people, hanging out with my fellow Stitch Sprouts designers, and walking the show floor. One of the neatest things (which I didn’t expect) was seeing several of the designs I’ve done for yarn companies on display in their booths!

Here’s my Clifden Cardigan at the Universal Yarns booth:

I also got to check out an upcoming book from Cooperative Press that includes one of my patterns. The book looks awesome. Expect to hear more from me about that later.

I hadn’t been to Columbus for about five years, and I have to say that the city was much more cosmopolitan than I remember! The main street going right by the convention center had great restaurants, neat boutiques, and of course the famous Jeni’s Ice Cream shop (it’s as good as everyone says it is).

On our last day, we ventured over to the North Market a few blocks away from the convention center, where I got (no lie) the best waffle I’ve ever eaten in my life. It has ruined me for all other waffles.

All in all, I’m so glad I went to the show this year. The best part was meeting tons of people in real life who I’d only talked to online. In my experience, knit/crochet designers and yarny people are generally fun and friendly, and this was no exception.

And next year the TNNA summer show is in Indianapolis, practically on my doorstep! I’m definitely planning to be there. :-)

Three new patterns!

Guess what guess what guess what? I just found out not one, not two, but three of my new patterns are now available for purchase!

These are designs I did for Universal Yarn back in March (remember when I had all that knitting I couldn’t show you right around that time?). Well, the pattern collection, Universal Yarn PC550 Deluxe Worsted Vol. 4, is out!

With no further ado, here are the patterns (all pictures by Shane Baskin/Black Box Studios):

Clifden Cardigan

I’m very fond of the cables on this sweater (they’re on the back too, although I don’t have a picture to show you, unfortunately). Increases between lines of rib on the sides give it a swingy A-line shape. Let’s just say it’s lucky this sample was knit in a size too small for me… I would have had a really hard time giving it up otherwise.

I named the sweater after this little town we stayed in when we visited the west coast of Ireland a few years ago. It was August, and although it was warmish, it was damp and drizzly most of the time. A wool cardigan like this would have been perfect.

Zingy Beanie

This hat uses a lot of twisted stitches to make those cool lines of rib between the diamond patterns. I was inspired by pictures of some old Aran sweaters that currently reside in museums. When the hat was right off the needles, the fabric was doing this really cool bias thing (due to the twisted stitches). I decided to block it out straight, but I think I’m going to make another one of these and let it do its thing. It was a different look, but still neat.