travels

Rhinebeck 2013 Wrap-Up

Rhinebeck was amazing this year. The weather was even better than last year (about 10 degrees cooler, which made it perfect sweater weather). I bought some great stuff, ate some excellent meals, and had a ton of fun.

My husband took a photography class with Gale Zucker (aka She Shoots Sheep Shots) and had a great time taking pictures all weekend. So he gets the credit for all these photos.

The gorgeous fall colors

Crowds waiting to get in on Sunday-there were at least twice this many on Saturday!

One of the many barns stuffed with vendors, yarn, and people

Woolly friends

Me enjoying a cider donut (it was delicious!!!)

The colossal line for Miss Babs’s booth–it was like this all weekend!

And, of course, I couldn’t have a Rhinebeck post without showing you my purchases, hehe.

First up, a huge skein of Dirty Water Dyeworks Johanna, which will probably become a vest or short-sleeved sweater:

These six skeins of O-Wool Balance Bulky are going to become a cabled shawl/wrap:

And finally, my husband picked out these two skeins of Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair, for gloves he’s going to knit himself:

Not pictured: a Barbara Walker stitch treasury that I’ve had trouble finding in stores, maple cotton candy, a huge bag of local apples.

I think we did pretty well this year!

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. :-)

Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival

I can’t believe I forgot to post about this! A little over a week ago, my husband and I found ourselves in Franklin, Indiana on one of the days of their annual Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival. We went in on a whim (hey, I’m always up for some yarny shopping), and we really enjoyed it!

The festival was much more extensive than I thought it would be. There were three barns of vendors–LYSes, dyers, spinners, wood crafters, etc. This lacemaking vendor, promoting local lacemaking classes, was one of my favorites:

I got to feel up some bison yarn for the first time:

My husband loves historical gadgets, so this antique sock machine was right up his alley:

Easily my favorite booth at the whole festival was a whole wall of hand-dyed yarn from a local dyer, A Good Yarn. It was the first booth I saw when I came in, and I probably spent more time there than at any of the others combined. I didn’t get a great picture of the booth, but you can see some of her gorgeous skeins in the background of this shot:

And, of course, I couldn’t leave her booth without purchasing something. I made away with two skeins of sportweight superwash in this luminous blue color:

Lucky for me she didn’t carry DK or worsted-weight yarn, or I would have really been in trouble!

My husband did a more extensive blog post (with more pictures, and quite frankly more witticisms than I could ever muster) here, if you’re interested in checking it out: Fiber, Fiber Everywhere OR The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Hoosiers. :-)