January 28, 2014February 1, 2014

TNNA & Vogue Knitting Live New York

Catch up blogging part two . . . when last we left our heroes . . .

TNNA

Jan began with TNNA our annual trade show. It’s a great time to reconnect with your business contacts, you friends, see all the new yarns and fashion trends coming in the Spring.

The “Wall of Yarn” is a great place to see what great new yarns are coming!

My first official appointment was on Friday for the Teacher Meet and Greet. This is an event where all the national knitting teachers sit at a table, and in a bizarre shop owner version of speed dating, folks walk up and down the tables sussing us out.

Here’s my nutty friend Melissa Leapman and I amusing ourselves with a selfie in the slow times

I decided to come a day early and take the rare treat of being a student. I took two classes that were like the designers yin and yang, art and science. First I took my pal Lily Chin’s draping class. I’ve really wanted to break out of the flat pattern drafting world I’m in, to the 3-D world of draping. I immediately came home and started shopping for an adjustable dress form – of course the problem is, I have NO space for it. ah well. I did put the theory into practice when I got home by draping an old t-shirt on myself to design a neck line for a new sweater. I can’t show any pics because it’s not published yet. It was such an interesting experiment, once it’s published, I’ll write a blog about the whole trip from sketch to weirdly draped t-shirt, to swatch, to pattern, to garment.

In the afternoon I took on the science part with an excellent class on Excel taught by my other pal, Edie Eckman. This was the perfect companion to the draping class. I use Excel for pattern grading (changing the size of the garment), but knew I would learn some new tricks from Edie. Better than the tricks was seeing how Edie uses excel to help her think through the pattern. I use it in a very similar way when I grade, but she had a spin on the “if this, than that”, way of thinking that was really great.

Saturday was spent in meetings and walking the sales floor collecting all sorts of wonderful new yarns for swatching . . . now all I need is a moment to play.

One of my favorite things about walking the floor was discovering my own designs hanging in booths. Not going to lie, that was kind of a thrill. Here I am geeking out over seeing my sweater at the KnitStyle booth:

Geek out #2 came at seeing my design hanging up at the Vogue Knitting booth:

Vogue Knitting Live New York

Speaking of Vogue Knitting, shortly after getting home from TNNA it was time for one of my all time favorite times of year, Vogue Knitting Live New York! I love all my teaching shows (mother loves all her children equally), but there’s a special place in my heart for VK Live NY, as it’s in my own hometown and it was the first big national show I ever worked.

I arrived before the sun was up. An unique experience in Times Square

I hardly took any pictures, or in fact did anything but eat, sleep and teach. I had a wonderfully, crazily full schedule and rocked a record (for me) of 20 hours of teaching in 3 days! Here’s a few shots from my classes.