Road Trip

It is official, next week I will be heading off onto the roads of the Wild Wild midWest on my very first solo knitting road trip! Woo hoo!

I have mentioned it here before, the first stop is the Small Knits Symposium. According to their website the event is about:

“Hats. Cowls. Mittens. Gloves. Scarves, shawlettes, and of course, socks. How we love those small projects, in small and not-so-small yarns. The Small Knits Symposium is an all-weekend retreat focused entirely on those beloved small knitted wearables.”

I am super excited to be attending this small event, sometimes small is better in that you don’t feel like you have to run all over the place to experience all the things. I will be taking classes from both Sivia Harding and Lorilee Beltman and I have every confidence that I will be completely inspired. I signed up for a Mobius class from Ms. Harding and I am hoping that it will finally click. I have tried and tried to figure it out on my own with the You Tubes but it just hasn’t stuck.

After the Symposium I will be heading down to Louisville, KY to visit some family and then I will jump back into the car and drive up to the Cincinatti, OH area to visit Lambikins Hideaway. Through the magic of Ravelry I have managed to form a wonderful relationship with some of the lovely ladies at this awesome store. They have taught a couple of classes based on my patterns and participate in the Ravelry LYS program where they can sell my patterns directly to customers.

Designed for crazy yarn!

They are also celebrating the anniversary of the shop (what a coinkydink) so it is going to be a blast. I will be bringing samples to put up as a “trunk show” and teaching a class on the Roller Coaster cowl. I will be there pretty much all day Thursday May 1st and then in the morning hours of May 2nd. If you are in the Cincinnati area please drop in and say hi, it would be great to meet people. You may find me shopping for yarn.

I can’t stay there all day on Friday because I have to then drive to Indianapolis for  TNNA. TNNA stands for The National Needlearts Association and it is the trade association for all things knitting, crocheting, crosstitchey, ect … and this is their Summer show. This is my first time going but I believe that it will be the total opposite of the Small Knits Symposium. I am guessing that it will be complete sensory overload. But again, I have no doubt that it will be completely inspirational.

TNNA ends Tuesday May 6th and I will return to Louisville for a brief rest and then come back home to Atlanta. All total I will be gone about 2 weeks. Crazy time!

I wanted to put all of this out there just in case there are people who are going to be in the same vicinity that I could meet. If you are going to either SKS or TNNA give me a holler and hopefully we can manage to run into each other. If you are in the Cincinnati area definitely come by Lambikins Hideaway (and I put into my contract that I get to have Skyline Chili at least once – definitely one of my bucket list food things).

If you aren’t in the MidWest – you could still help. I don’t think I have taken this long of a drive by myself in a very, very long time. Do you have any tips for surviving solo road trips? What should I make sure to pack/bring/have in the front seat to save my sanity? Any audiobooks that would be perfect and not with the putting me to sleep? I would love to know!