Kathy & Steve's Excellent Adventure Part 1

Many of you have probably read on other blogs all about TNNA - our semi-annual industry tradeshow, where shop owners can take classes and meet with all of the yarn & accessory companies under one roof. I love TNNA, in fact, I love tradeshows in general. I know, I'm weird.

Now, in true blogger fashion, I brought along my camera. But alas, I have failed you all. I really didn't take any pictures. I'm not sure why this is, although I'm sure it is related to the reason I did not bring a single project with me. I know - you are all gasping and starting to sweat. Many of my fellow shop owners did the same as they fumbled through their knitting bags, pulling out projects to give to me. I gracefully declined. More on this topic later.

Two of the most fabulous summaries of the show that was can be found on Stephanie's blog and on Franklin's blog.

We celebrated Steve's 40th birthday on Friday evening with our friends from Fiesta yarns, Jeannie and Brad, who happened to be celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary! We had a grand time. Steve's special day was on Saturday and after a long day at the show, attending a reception thrown by the folks at Interweave to celebrate Knitting Daily TV and then dinner, we reconvened at the Hyatt where there were simply an amazing array of knitterati gathered. Again, cameraless, but again SPM's blog provides a much better summary than I could have written anyway.

Steve was pretty pumped that Steph bought him a birthday beer - if only we could have been in Toronto this past weekend to return the favor. For me, I got to see some old friends and make new ones. I got to meet Abby - who I knew of, but had never met. She was walking around, talking and spinning on her drop spindle all at the same time. We were talking about yarn (surprise) and somehow the conversation turned to cashmere and sparkle. Steve mentioned that this is the "perfect" Kathy yarn - as I love cashmere and nearly all things sparkly. Abby's eyes bug out of her head and she gets all excited and runs off to get something out of her bag. She explains that before coming to the show, she worked up some beautiful cashmere-blend fiber and added a bit of angelina to it. After the fact she thought she had ruined perfectly good cashmere by adding the glitz - she wondered who in the world would want cashmere batts with sparkle? She packed it and figured maybe it would find a home. And it did:

The picture doesn't do it justice. I was floored that she gave me this. I hugged it and cuddled it for the rest of the evening. I bragged about it to everyone who happened by our group. "Look, it's cashmere-y and sparkle-y and Abby made it and she gave it to me, ME!!"

On the way back to the hotel that night, I was still on cloud 9 with my little bundle of fiber, babbling to Steve about it. Then, he burst my bubble. How? He reminded me I don't know how to spin. Minor detail, my dear, minor detail.

The rest of the show was great. I scored a copy of Nancy Thomas' new book Tweed:

We have it in the store as well, it's got some great patterns and a wonderful history of of the origins of tweed.

One of our priorities at the show was catching up with Tobias and Antonio from Malabrigo. As many of you know, there was a fire at their mill at the beginning of the month, just before the show. Everyone was alright, but it looks like everything was a complete loss. They emphasized that they will be dyeing yarn again soon and the most important thing is that nobody was hurt. Tobias always comes to the show with something new to share with us and despite the fire, he was able to bring along this:

It's Malabrigo Sock Yarn. Given the circumstances, we probably won't see it in the store for quite awhile, but that's okay - we can be patient!

Instead of heading for home after TNNA, we went onto Chicago for another conference. This one was non-yarn related, but still very good in it's own right. Our timing was perfect. The conference ended and we stayed two additional days to celebrate this:

This is my nephew Daniel, my sister's only son. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master's Degree in Philosophy and will be entering their PhD program this fall. Way to go Daniel!

After graduation, Steve and I headed to the airport to finally come home. We had been gone for a long time and were really missing the boys. Unfortunately, United Airlines had other plans for us. Our flight was cancelled. After a small meltdown, we gathered ourselves, weighed our options and decided to try again the next morning. We headed over to Rosemont and our hotel room. Does Rosemont ring a bell to anyone? It should. How about this:

Guesses anyone?

It was a terrific trip, but it's really good to be home.

Kathy