TNNA Recap!

Whew! If you spend any time in the knitting-social-media-sphere you probably know that the big Columbus TNNA show was this past weekend. It was my second time at the show and my first time exhibiting- I shared a booth with Tiny Owl Knits (!!!!) in the Deep South neighborhood of booths (that'd be my distributor, don'tchaknow.) TNNA is sort of like summer camp- I know some old-school designers and exhausted exhibitors would disagree with that statement, but for a lot of us it's an excuse to get together with like-minded folks we never usually see in person and make new friends... and maybe do a little worky stuff too.

I didn't take many pictures, but Lee (aka Leethal) has graciously loaned me a few to fill in the blanks.

Our booth! Everyone commented on how comfortable it was, haha. And miss Tiny Owl (who is, by the way, just as sweet and adorable in real life as you'd suppose, and twice as funny) made it smell like lavender and pachouli, effectively putting everyone who entered into a sort of blissed-out haze. We spent a lot of time lounging around there.


(via Lee)

Stephanie/Tiny Owl, me, Stacey/FreshStitches, and Lee. Yes, Stacey has birds on her head. What better way to model amigurumi?

Stephanie's friend-sisstant Katy and Ms. SpillyJane, who seems to be deep in ponderance.

Stephanie demonstrating her mega-cute Fairy Castle needle holders to some LYS folks, and Antonio from Malabrigo (I finally got to meet my bosses! Yay!)




Jess from Ravelry tried on a few hats, and looked damned cute in all of 'em.




And of course we had to go to Jeni's for ice cream, where we saw something nobody should see. It involved pants. And that is all I'll say about it.



(via Lee)

At night, everyone goes to the Hyatt to knit... I am exactly as tired as I look (but less on-drugs than you might think.) That's Sarah, The Sexy Knitter, cracking up behind me.


I'm sure I'll have more pictures to share later, I know Katy took a ton. All in all, it was an exhausting but awesome weekend. Last year I didn't know many people and stayed kind of far away, and felt totally out of my element- this year I felt like I had a much better idea of what the heck I was doing, and had lovely roommates and boothmates and pals to hang out with (and met a few more! Yay!) It is crazy and amazing when people actually recognize you and like what you're doing... and even crazier when it's people you're totally in awe of! I'm always so surprised when people I consider knitting rock stars know who I am, haha. The funniest part, of course, is that we all know each other by our Ravelry and twitter names and not our faces, so there's a lot of "Wait, who are you....OH MY GOD I TOTALLY KNOW YOU FROM THE INTERNET!" It's like internet dating for knitters. Or....something.

Anniversin'

(Our wedding cake baker gives you a free anniversary cake as part of the package, cool eh?)

A little over a year ago, I married this dude:



So far, it's been a pretty good decision.



Though I'm getting to the point where wedding planning sounds like fun again. I hope people I know start getting married and letting me make all their decisions. We talked about getting divorced and remarried every few years so we could keep having parties, but I think that would get expensive pretty fast.

Anyway, to celebrate we went on a lil' vision quest to the House on the Rock, which is a magical nightmare funscape of oddity.



And stayed in a room that was supposed to look like the moon



And ate red velvet french toast in Chicago



(it's a lot more appetizing in person.)

We also dinked around in Madison, and stopped at the Sow's Ear, which my mom has been talking about for like a year for some reason (I think she read an article about it.)



This is Travis's "Why are we in a yarn store, eat your quiche faster" face. It was good quiche.