The cover of Shaping Shawls can now be seen at Cooperative Press. I’m SO pleased with how it looks. And not to be too much of a tease….. there are lots of beautiful pictures inside too.
I have created a Facebook page for Knit & Knag Designs, where I will be posting news and such as they come up. In fact, I have some very exciting news there right now, if you’d like to take a look. 
Reviewing the final copy of the book……..
While I was at TNNA, I spoke with a great many yarnies and saw an amazing variety of yarn. Some of it followed me home and will be converted to brand new designs.
Alisha Goes Around was amazingly generous to designers, and offered a huge variety of yarn. Her colours are rich and varied, and her bases are amazing. The gray one on the left is a laceweight yarn (Twittering of Magpies) with the slightest hint of metal sparkle in it. You can barely see it, but every so often a sparkle catches the light. It’s amazing – and unlike a lot of the sparkle yarn I have seen, I am really drawn to this one because it’s so subtle.
The other three yarns are fingering weight, which I always love for making shawls. ….and maybe also for the new fingerless mittens I’ve been plotting.
At Lorna’s Laces I was treated to two skeins of fingering weight yarn – one is their brand new base Solemate, and the other is Shepherd Sock. Amanda Jarvis picked the colours for me, and she had an uncanny sense for what I would like. The two skeins she picked out were just perfect.
Roxanne at Zen Yarn Garden had this gorgeous Serenity Lace II in a midnight blue that makes me think of dark, starlit nights in distant lands. “Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away…..” ….ok, maybe not that one, but you know the type, with flying carpets, handsome princes and perhaps a genie or two.
Artyarns from White Plains, NY is a brand new company for me. While they have been around since 2002, I have never encountered them before, but it was a delightful new acquaintance. They make really high-end yarn with a lot of glitter and sequins. As well as some drop dead gorgeous cashmere. The red skein is their Cashmere-1 and in for some reason my camera cannot capture just how dark burgundy this colour is.
I actually met Iris and Elliot in the hotel bar, along with Daniela (their European representative) and Judy from Fabulous Yarn. Elliot told me all about the yarn they make, and I had the chance to see what everyone was knitting too. Amazing stuff. So the next day I had to go to their booth and of course I fell in love with their cashmere in particular. The second skein is Rhapsody light – a silk/mohair blend, and I’m really curious how that will knit up since I haven’t really worked with mohair before.
Megan of Skeined Alive is actually an old friend from the Sanguine Gryphon Dyecamp a couple of years ago. While I haven’t dyed a single skein of yarn since the dye camp, Megan was enamoured and ran with it. She’s created her own line of yarns which she sells on Etsy. I ran into her during a class with Cat Bordhi, and then spent a few hours with her and Madalene of Knit One Weave Two. Anyway, this is one of Megan’s yarns. Apparently a friend of hers asked her to dye a yarn with “all the colours from my compost bin”, and here is the result. Appropriately named “Vermiculture”. I love it! (And I promise you, while it has all of the colours of the compost bin, it has none of the less desirable attributes…..)
I also had the opportunity to meet Anzula from California. I actually initially met them because they were rooming with Jaala of Knitcircus, but of course I had to stop by their booth at the show too. And I was blown away by all their clear and bright colours. They seemed to be going with a theme of hot pink and gray for the show, and it looked spectacular. Anzula will be sending me some of their Milky Way yarn for a double-knit project that I’ve been planning for some time. It was really hard to choose colours, but I ended up with the above combination of “Elephant” and “Cornflower”.
Additionally, I chatted with a number of other companies about their yarns and I think I have found the absolute perfect yarn from Claudia Handpainted Yarns – it’s a secret project (of course…..) that has been looking for yarn for quite some time, but I’ve never really found the right one. This one though, is really spot on. I can’t wait to get knitting.
All that said – I don’t want to total the number of km of yarn that may have followed me home from TNNA. Whatever that number is, I’m sure it’s greater than what found it’s way back here from the Frolic in Toronto in April. Amazingly, I have plans for lots of it already. So on that note, I guess I should get knitting.
This past weekend I have been in Columbus at the TNNA tradeshow promoting my new book and patterns. Cooperative Press had a booth which displayed almost all the new shawls from the book, along with some amazing samples from other designers.
All the shawls along the top of the booth are mine. Shannon Okey (a.k.a. knitgrrl) is setting up the iPad to take orders.
All these shawls are also mine, and from the book. Pardon the mess on the floor – this picture is from the set-up the day before the show opened.
One of the really amazing thing about going to TNNA was that I had the opportunity to meet so many people that I had only encountered on-line and in books before.
The inimitable Jaala Spiro is the editor of Knitcircus, and we really hit it off. She’s amazing and funny, and we had a great time walking around the show floor.
I met Michelle Miller – the fickle knitter – who was exhibiting in her own booth.
There was Woolly Wormhead (working on a hat, of course)
Ann Kingstone (whose new book will be distributed by Cooperative Press in North America)
the amazing Ragga of Knitting Iceland
and of course Heather Dixon of Army of Knitters. Here she’s posing with the polar bear belonging to Alisha Goes Around.
Alisha had some really gorgeous yarn – the pictures truly don’t do it justice, but never fear…. thanks to Alisha’s generosity, I brought some home which will be converted to some designs later on.
I was also delighted to finally get to meet Roxanne Yeun of Zen Yarn Garden. Roxanne and I have worked on a couple of projects before, including Princess Cottongrass, and Margarita Leaves – the yellow shawl from Shaping Shawls. This is Roxanne helping the wild hoards of customers at Sample It! on the Friday night leading up to the show. I don’t seem to have any pictures from her booth, although I visited several times during the weekend.
I also had the chance to meet Barbara G Walker. The Barbara Walker. She was at TNNA on the Saturday promoting her new DVD, and I got a signed copy.
Amy Detjen brought both me and Jaala over and introduced us, and we had a delightful chat.
All in all, it was a wonderful show. I have so much more to share, so I don’t think it will all fit in this one post. I’ll just have to save some for another day. But one thing is certain – I will definitely be going back to TNNA. Can’t wait to see some of my new friends again. Hopefully some of you will be at Rhinebeck in the fall.
Back in 2009 I had the pleasure of working with Maylin from Tri’Coterie on my Mystic Air shawl. Maylin created some gorgeous lace yarn for me that was used in the design.
Since then, Maylin has introduced a number of new yarn bases and colours, and today I received the following (gorgeous!) samples in the mail:
From left to right we have 2 skeins of 100% SW merino lace in dark greens, 1 skein of 100% SW merino lace in dark teal, 1 skein of Kid Lace in blues and black, 1 skein of merino tencel lace in red, and 1 skein of silk sock in red. All of the laceweight yarn is about 800 m per 100 g, which happens to be one of my favourite weights for lace yarn. It’s a little thicker than some lace yarns, and I think it gives the lace shawl a really nice body. I already have a plan for the silk sock, but I have a feeling the laceweights won’t be far behind.
My new summer top is finally off the needles. But first – here is a picture of it *almost* done. Just a few more rows to go, but I thought I’d try it on for size. The needles are still attached (you can see them dangling by the right shoulder), and I hadn’t knit the stripe yet.
Here is a picture of it just as I’m about to block it:
Once it’s dry, I’ll take a few more pictures and post them too. The top looks quite nice I think, and gives me something to wear to TNNA next weekend in Columbus, OH.
Recent Comments