The Fiber Art Gene

I hope you'll forgive a little parental pride. DD#1 has been taking a Swedish Huck Weaving class through our homeschool cooperative and has just completed the needlework portion of a hand towel she is making for me. Although she wasn't too enthusiastic about taking the class initially, she has fallen in love with the art and is busy planning her next project. I am so pleased with her talent.

I had a delightful afternoon at the Mall of America. It was the site of Knit Out & Crochet 2007.
My girlfriend called last week to invite me to go with her and we really had a blast. First, we got to see Lily Chin, Annie Modesitt and Vickie Howell. We also got a lesson in Free Form Crochet/Knitting from Margaret Hubert and I saw a demonstration on crochet cables, which have always intrigued me. We also saw a fun fashion show of knit and crochet clothing. We also saw the fastest crocheter competition. The winner was Lisa Gentry, with Lily Chin coming in a very close second. Pretty amazing to watch these two ladies' flying fingers!

Then we spend a pleasant couple of hours wandering around, visiting the various vendor booths. It pays to go at the end of a conference because I scored a sweet little bonus. As one of the vendors was starting to pack up to leave, I pointed out to my friend a book I recently checked out from the library that I just loved and hoped to add to my library one day. The lady in the booth said, "I'm giving away books because it's cheaper than shipping them home. Would you like it?" Oh boy, did I want it?!? Guess what book I came home with! This one. Woohoo!

The Knit Out & Crochet events do not allow vendors to sell items (except B&N was selling books by the authors who were there to autograph books), so it was unusual to visit vendors and look at great books, yarn and accessories and NOT be able to buy anything. In one sense, it was a good thing, because impulse purchases were non-existent and the budget was saved. But it was difficult because there were numerous projects that I saw that I would have bought patterns and/or yarn for, had they been available, which I'm not sure I'll be able to remember the sources of later. We did receive a large bag full of free patterns and flyers from many different vendors, so I'm going to spend some time sorting through them yet tonight, to see if some of the projects I fell in love with are included. Otherwise, I'll have to try and write down as much information about the projects while I remember them and hope that I can figure out where to find the patterns and yarn.

Next year, I'm bringing a camera, a notebook and a pen, so I can do a better job keeping track of the great ideas that were displayed all over the Mall of America.