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!

 

Behind the Scenes

It has come to my attention in a roundabout way that there are some individuals who are under the impression that the lovely woman that I have been using as a model is in fact me.

This is Fatimah.

This is not true. I totally wish I was as statuesque, graceful and photogenic as my model, but alas I am not. I am also older and more generous in proportion. Fatimah makes a great model and she also happens to be a gifted knitwear designer. I have featured one of her patterns on this blog previously.

Yep, there I am. Photo courtesy of Holly Clawges

 

I studiously avoid having my photograph taken, it is something that I have done all of my life. Luckily for you (I guess) one of the ladies in my knitting posse brought her new camera to knit night a couple of weeks ago and took some pictures. She managed to get a shot of me that I do not hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns. In fact, I think it is a really good picture which is more a testament to her skill than me.

So, there you have it. Looking at this picture again I realize it is time for me to make an appointment with my hair stylist. I need to get some new color. I loved the teal but I am thinking maybe purple this time.

Knitting Symposium

I paid an invoice today and found it a bit weird to be totally excited about shelling out cash. But I am excited about confirming that I will be going to the Small Knits Symposium.

If you have even briefly looked at my designs you would notice that I am all about small projects. I am an instant gratification kinda girl and it shows. And by “instant” I mean in the context of knitting where instant actually can take up to a couple of months.
Semantics aside, I really prefer to knit accessories and other wee items. It allows me to experiment with interesting new techniques and see if they are to my taste. In theory that will allow me to know if I am ready to commit to using the technique in a larger project, but in reality it only lets me know if I want to use the technique again in another small project – because I am not even fooling myself.

This symposium is going to be an opportunity to hang out with other like minded knitters. Knitters who aren’t going to try and talk me into working on a sweater. And of course to take classes. There are going to be classes with Lorilee Beltman and Sivia Harding and a talk from Cat Bordhi!

So, if you are (or can be) in the rough area of Bloomington, Indiana on April 24 – 27 it would be awesome to be able to hang out with you and get our small project on!

Bonus points – which class(es) should I take? Odds are anything I learn there will turn up in a new design. What would y’all like to see me take? Let me know in the comments.

ps: When I was previewing this my pop-up blocker said it blocked a pop-up. If  you get a pop-up please let me know so I can further investigate it. My apologies if it happened.

Storey Time

I am not going to re-blog or anything, but wanted to share something that was a little exciting for me. Remember the little lace number that I posted about a wee bit ago? Well, the great people over at Storey Publishing asked me to fill out an interview for their blog and I totally did.

The name of their blog is Inside Storey, which is quite witty. Hopefully my interview isn’t too boring. One plus (maybe) is that if you have ever wondered what I look like, they managed to con me out of a picture.

Do any of y’all have any questions for me that I didn’t answer in this interview? I would be happy to try to shed light on any burning mystery any of you might be experiencing. Ask away in the comments (or not, I have never been accused of being subtle and there might not be any mystery.)