On June 5th I flew into Columbus, Ohio to attend The National Needlearts Association trade show. I hadn’t displayed in a booth since 2002 so I was feeling a little rusty. Since this is strictly a wholesale show, I was there to open new accounts for my knitting patterns. Fortunately, my friend Marilyn King offered to come along from the Denver area to help out. She efficiently got me organized (you’d think I’d never done this before as disorganized as I was!) and we quickly got our display up so we could go out for dinner and relax.

My booth: Left, center, and right

The next night we went to dinner at a nice German restaurant in Columbus with friends and colleagues:

JoLene Treace and Marilyn King, both designers and friends!

Denise, Arnhild Hillesland, and Linda from Ames, Iowa. I taught on a trip hosted by Arnhild to Sweden and Norway several years ago. Too much fun! She carries my favorite Norwegian yarn: Rauma (Strikkegarn and Finullgarn to be specific).

Well, schmoozing is definitely an integral part of TNNA and I did my best! My four new patterns were well received and I am working hard to get them into booklet form to print and distribute by September 1.

I met Julia Grunau, the creative mind behind Patternfish—a new website just for downloading patterns. It is a month old now and already there are over 950 patterns there. I am thrilled that Julia asked me to participate, so I am also working on pattern layout for that venue. It’s a lovely site and very navigable. Check it out!

After TNNA I taught for 3 days at Knitters Connection, also in Columbus, OH. This was the event’s second year and it was wonderful! I met the Ravelry gang and Clara Parkes (and bought her new book, doncha know: The Knitters Book of Yarn).

At the obligatory Knitters Connection teachers’ meeting, Cat Bordhi was so excited to show us all a new technique she worked out for making ssk look nicer. You know how one side of your sock gusset can look zig-zaggy? Well now, with her method, the ssk line is as straight and clean looking as the K2tog side. This photo, below, shows the difference on a sock heel gusset. I can’t wait for her to put up a new video on YouTube to demonstrate it! How lucky we in the knitting community are, for teachers like her who want to share knowledge rather than keep it proprietary.

My sock heel gusset, with normal ssk (inconsistent size and tension of decreases) below and Cat’s neat and tidy ssk above. Is that awesome or what? OK… so it’s subtle in this photo, but I am very psyched about this!

I am looking forward to the remaining workshops I have planned this year. You can always check out my schedule on this blog—I update it monthly, believe it or not! I’ll be in Colorado and Stitches Midwest and Stitches East*, three knitting events in Vermont (YAY!), Pennsylvania, Virginia, Santa Fe, Michigan, Montreal, Chicago, northern California, and Ohio will finish up my year. What a great year it has been so far!

* I am offering the Danish Skrå-trøje again at Stitches East this November and want to share photos I received from Dianna Smith who took the class 2 years ago. After completing the little sweater in class, she designed her own full-sized Skrå-trøje. What a fabulous job she did!

I am feeling more and more like a Vermonter, which is a good thing. It just gets harder and harder to leave to travel.

Mmmm…. future currant jelly! Enjoy your summer, everyone!