2400 kilometres worth of fun!
That's what the last week and a half have been for me...fun! TNNA was, once again, a total blast. The whole trip began on Saturday the 5th of June with the party at my youngest son's house, and ended up on June 15th watching an arrest near the same youngest son's house.
Just before I went to TNNA though, I broke my nose. Yup, that's right. I broke my nose. I was weeding the little garden in the front of the shop, and walked right into one of the cross pieces of our sign. I can tell you it hurt like crazy. Fortunately, there wasn't too much swelling, and only a bit of discolouration so I didn't look like I'd just been in a bar fight. It didn't look bad, but boy did it hurt.
As I was approaching Walton Hills Ohio, about 2 hours from my final destination of Columbus, I called Mr Knits and said I thought I would turn around and come home. My nose was bothering me that much. Alas, there wasn't a room available in that town, or Manchester, or the other town whose name I forget about an hour down the road, so I decided suck it up and continue on to Columbus. I found a room, and went to bed. Miraculously, the next morning (and probably due to too many Naproxen), my nose felt so much better. It could have been the anticipation of the all day spinning class I was attending that day though.
The class with Beth Smith was fabulous. My spinning has improved immensely - I learned how to park and draft, short draft, long draft, another technique I think was called folded drafting, and I learned to ply then beat my yarn. We spun ordinary corriedale roving, and then with the silk, alpaca, llama, merino/silk and soysilk. It was absolutely wonderful. I even learned how to use a drop spindle. I asked Beth about Navajo plying and she showed us how to do that too.
The next day I helped one of my suppliers, Kertzer, set up their booth in the convention centre. Now, that is a lot of work and definitely not for the faint of heart. The air conditioning is not turned on for set up, so the hall is incredibly hot and stuffy. The booth did look great when it was finished. One of the posters featured a male model whom Alma and Josie had named Roberto (to pronoune it correctly, you must really roll the r) - I think he looks more like a Liam, but his real name is Jude. Turns out he's a firefighter from the GTA. Here's Barb blowing him a kiss.
Kertzer has introduced two new lines of yarn this year - Tiara and Meadows. I have ordered both with an expected delivery date of mid July. Tiara has a bit of metallic thread running through it, and Meadows is an alpaca (oh so soft) and wool mixture. The Ravelry party on Friday night was fun - lots of Jeni's ice cream and gin and tonics. The amazing thing about these photos is I know most of these people by name...and although we live all over this great continent of ours, it really is a small community.
On Saturday morning, I took a dyeing class, and while it was interesting to see how the teacher set up and taught the class, I didn't learn anything new. But I did make some pretty yarn!
Then promptly at 10 am the show opened, and the yarn frenzy began. The convention has a square footage equal to 4 acres. So, it's big. Really really big. This year, they separated the yarnies from the stitches (needlepoint and cross stitch) so it was less ground to cover. The yarns were confined to the first 14 aisles, and the needlepointers had the rest. In each aisle there were more than 60 booths, each offering something I absolutely had to have. I did show such restraint for the most part, but I did place orders at a few of the booths. I usually come home, look over the printed material and then place my orders.
Some of the cool new things out are adjustable circular needles. They are an interesting concept, but need a bit of finetuning before I'll order them. And, the Stitch Nation yarn by Debbie Stoller of Stitch and Bitch Fame is really nice. I have ordered a bag in every colour; this should be in the shop in less than two weeks. I learned how to do Tunisia crochet (again) and will be holding a class in it later this summer.
I was away from the store for 10 days; I'm usually in a panic if I'm not in the shop for 24 hours, so you can imagine how I was feeling after day 3. I'm positive Mr Knits was tired of my phone calls asking how things were. Thank goodness for my Net 10 phone and 15 cents a minute long distance. I used over 300 minutes calling home.
The show goes for three days, and on Monday it was time to head home. Alma from Kertzer came home with me, and that woman can shop! We needed gas, so we stopped in Lodi Ohio for gas, and of course we had to check out the nearby outlet mall. Alma pretty much cleared out the Ralph Lauren store in 30 minutes.
At the border, we had no problems or delays at all. I just couldn't figure out how the border guard knew I lived in a log cabin - until I remembered my licence plate. He had us in stitches - he really should be a comedian.
So, all in all, it was a fun, busy, relaxing trip. I'm glad to be back here, but can't wait for TNNA next June. The yarn fumes are fabulous!
Just before I went to TNNA though, I broke my nose. Yup, that's right. I broke my nose. I was weeding the little garden in the front of the shop, and walked right into one of the cross pieces of our sign. I can tell you it hurt like crazy. Fortunately, there wasn't too much swelling, and only a bit of discolouration so I didn't look like I'd just been in a bar fight. It didn't look bad, but boy did it hurt.
As I was approaching Walton Hills Ohio, about 2 hours from my final destination of Columbus, I called Mr Knits and said I thought I would turn around and come home. My nose was bothering me that much. Alas, there wasn't a room available in that town, or Manchester, or the other town whose name I forget about an hour down the road, so I decided suck it up and continue on to Columbus. I found a room, and went to bed. Miraculously, the next morning (and probably due to too many Naproxen), my nose felt so much better. It could have been the anticipation of the all day spinning class I was attending that day though.
The class with Beth Smith was fabulous. My spinning has improved immensely - I learned how to park and draft, short draft, long draft, another technique I think was called folded drafting, and I learned to ply then beat my yarn. We spun ordinary corriedale roving, and then with the silk, alpaca, llama, merino/silk and soysilk. It was absolutely wonderful. I even learned how to use a drop spindle. I asked Beth about Navajo plying and she showed us how to do that too.
The next day I helped one of my suppliers, Kertzer, set up their booth in the convention centre. Now, that is a lot of work and definitely not for the faint of heart. The air conditioning is not turned on for set up, so the hall is incredibly hot and stuffy. The booth did look great when it was finished. One of the posters featured a male model whom Alma and Josie had named Roberto (to pronoune it correctly, you must really roll the r) - I think he looks more like a Liam, but his real name is Jude. Turns out he's a firefighter from the GTA. Here's Barb blowing him a kiss.
Kertzer has introduced two new lines of yarn this year - Tiara and Meadows. I have ordered both with an expected delivery date of mid July. Tiara has a bit of metallic thread running through it, and Meadows is an alpaca (oh so soft) and wool mixture. The Ravelry party on Friday night was fun - lots of Jeni's ice cream and gin and tonics. The amazing thing about these photos is I know most of these people by name...and although we live all over this great continent of ours, it really is a small community.
On Saturday morning, I took a dyeing class, and while it was interesting to see how the teacher set up and taught the class, I didn't learn anything new. But I did make some pretty yarn!
Then promptly at 10 am the show opened, and the yarn frenzy began. The convention has a square footage equal to 4 acres. So, it's big. Really really big. This year, they separated the yarnies from the stitches (needlepoint and cross stitch) so it was less ground to cover. The yarns were confined to the first 14 aisles, and the needlepointers had the rest. In each aisle there were more than 60 booths, each offering something I absolutely had to have. I did show such restraint for the most part, but I did place orders at a few of the booths. I usually come home, look over the printed material and then place my orders.
Some of the cool new things out are adjustable circular needles. They are an interesting concept, but need a bit of finetuning before I'll order them. And, the Stitch Nation yarn by Debbie Stoller of Stitch and Bitch Fame is really nice. I have ordered a bag in every colour; this should be in the shop in less than two weeks. I learned how to do Tunisia crochet (again) and will be holding a class in it later this summer.
I was away from the store for 10 days; I'm usually in a panic if I'm not in the shop for 24 hours, so you can imagine how I was feeling after day 3. I'm positive Mr Knits was tired of my phone calls asking how things were. Thank goodness for my Net 10 phone and 15 cents a minute long distance. I used over 300 minutes calling home.
The show goes for three days, and on Monday it was time to head home. Alma from Kertzer came home with me, and that woman can shop! We needed gas, so we stopped in Lodi Ohio for gas, and of course we had to check out the nearby outlet mall. Alma pretty much cleared out the Ralph Lauren store in 30 minutes.
At the border, we had no problems or delays at all. I just couldn't figure out how the border guard knew I lived in a log cabin - until I remembered my licence plate. He had us in stitches - he really should be a comedian.
So, all in all, it was a fun, busy, relaxing trip. I'm glad to be back here, but can't wait for TNNA next June. The yarn fumes are fabulous!
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