Live and In Person

This is just a quick post, friends, mostly a photo dump of all the fun I had last weekend at Stitches West.

It was a bit surreal to be at such a big show in person, and I’m not sure I could have done it if Stitches hadn’t been so assiduous about vaccines and masks. Seeing in advance how they were planning to handle that helped me commit to going. I know we all have different comfort levels, and mine is that I like to feel safe and to feel like the people around me are doing what they can to help me stay safe, and that’s what happened there. I appreciated it.

I took a weaving class on working with double heddles, because I do love to keep learning, always, and I’m not a particularly advanced weaver, so it was great to stretch my skills. But the real joy of being there was in being with my PEOPLE again!

I was so blessed to have my dear friend of many years, Laura, there with me as my roommate and study buddy. Laura is the original yarn enabler — the person who taught me to knit — and I’m so glad we got to spend a great weekend together.

It felt like everywhere I turned there was another knitting friend … some of whom I only knew virtually up until now. Members of both my Tuesday Northern California and Thursday Southern California knitting group were there, and I kept forgetting that they didn’t know each other already. We may get some cross-seeding going on from this event, so perhaps they’ll all know each other eventually. (If you’re looking for some good knitting company, my Tuesday group is through Uncommon Threads in Los Altos and my Thursday group is through the Yarnover Truck in LA, and you can get details on each of their websites.)

I was grateful to get to meet and hug Gaye Glasspie in person. She’s one of the most inspirational people I can think of in the yarn world, and she’s been kind enough to appear on my video podcast. (We pulled our masks down and held our breath here to get a good picture.) If you’re not already following her and you want a bit of sunshine in your inbox every Monday morning, sign up for her newsletter.

The market was fun, colorful, and nearly overwhelming. I only took a few snaps; I was too busy most of the time with looking and touching and talking.

And finally, I had the unexpected fun of getting to walk the runway in the Saturday night Makers’ Showcase. I hadn’t been to one of these before and didn’t know what to expect. Someone handed me a form on the way in and told me to write about what I was wearing (it was my Lorelei’s Looking Glass shawl), and that turned out to be an entry form to walk the runway. Since Stitches was a smaller show this year, I think everyone who filled out the form got called up to walk and show off their knitting. Leaving aside regrets about perhaps being better prepared, the whole thing was a hoot.

This is the start of what feels like a comparatively busy show season for me. I leave Wednesday to teach at the Carolina Fiber Festival, then I’ll be teaching in Loveland, Colorado in April at the Interweave Yarn Fest and in Jasper National Park, Alberta Canada in May for the Hippy Strings Knitting Retreat. Details of all of these, as well as my upcoming virtual classes at Vogue and Stitches, are on my Classes page. Will I get to see you, in person or online, sometime soon?