I’ve watched and followed along for years as some of my favourite yarn shops and designers all blog about going to TNNA. It’s only an industry conference, but because it’s knitting, it’s somehow way more fun. If it was a random widget makers conference, I’m sure it wouldn’t be exciting (unless you love making random widgets, I suppose) but a gathering of that many knitting masterminds is exciting. Stitchy McYarnpants and I flew in on Friday, January 7th (yes, I’m behind on blog posts) and kicked off our unofficial promotional …

I am flying around the house tonight throwing handknits in a bag and trying to remember to pack my phone charger and sharpies and spanx and socks and a toque and about 80 million other things for when we hit the road tomorrow morning. Rhinebeck is always tricky to pack for because I always try to pile in everything that I’ve knit in the previous year and usually that isn’t very space saving. I’m normally a very very efficient packer, but for some reason Rhinebeck always throws me into a tizzy.

Part of the process of writing a book means lots of talking about writing the book. Conversations are a lot more interesting now because anything can be connected to the joy of being published. Some people ask if it’s changed how I knit. (Not really.) Some ask if it changed how I feel about publishing. (Yes, I have more respect and sympathy for editors than ever before, even with knowing Minty!) To date no one has asked the big one, “How much has your morning routine changed?” (Lots, there’s much …

As part of the BlogHer shenanigans in New York City last weekend, the kind folks at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia held a cocktail reception for a few hundred bloggers and Martha fans. I piled into a taxi with my new pals Unlikely Mama and Working Mom Fence and headed off to the MSLO building.

A few weeks ago Bestitched mentioned an exchange she had with a coworker about a handknit skirt she was wearing. The coworker sneered something along the lines of, “aren’t you just the sweetest in your homemade clothes.”

Happy Mother’s Day Mumsy!

I’m furiously trying to finish up the last of the stash to hit my April 30th deadline for Stashdown 2010 and I’m almost there. While I keep working on that, I thought I’d round up some of the fun stuff happening this week. Random Wednesday it is!

Now with less camping.
The Boston Common Cod Fiber Guild put on a conference of sorts this weekend. Technically an un-conference, which means that the participants are also the session leaders. Pretty cool way to do it. Bascially, if you wanted to see something, you posted it on the wiki. If you were willing to teach or lead a panel, you posted it on the wiki. Once there was interest shown, a schedule was made up and off we went.
The weekend was kicked off with a presentation from Julia of Twist …

Before starting a project, there’s usually a swatch. A lovely piece of knitting that gets washed once (if it’s lucky) and then gets fondled and measured and then tossed aside when the real knitting begins. It always seems such a shame to have these wee squares of different sizes just laying about.
While doing a stash toss this weekend, I found a bag of gauge swatches from some of my earlier projects (some pre-blog even.) I snipped off the labels I’d so carefully attached and sewed them together on the sewing …