TNNA Recap

Recharging phone & self at the hotel,
Day 1 of TNNA!

At last, I am getting a chance to collect my thoughts and share my TNNA trip with you! I really enjoy going to Columbus for the summer trade show - at this point, I know lots of great places to go to, if only I have the time! My morning coffee/tea run took me invariably to North Market (which is also where I had several tasty lunches). I know this is probably sacrilegious to say, but I managed to go the entire trip without getting any Jeni's ice cream. Don't worry, I made up for it by drinking some tasty local beers - my favorite was the White Dragon Jasmine Saison from Barley's Brewing Company, which was pretty much the most delicious beer I've ever tasted!

Columbus was celebrating Gay Pride at the same time our convention was in town, so on Saturday I was able to catch a little of the Pride Parade!

This year, I had fewer meetings and social obligations, which was pretty nice! I did attend Eucalan & Kristin Omdahl's meet & greet in the Deep South Fibers booth, where Wrapture was making its official TNNA debut. Stephen West dropped by wearing a jaw-dropping intarsia panda sweater, so of course I had to take a photo!

Everywhere you looked, there were Zoom Looms with pretty woven squares. No wonder I became obsessed and brought one home with me!

The best part about TNNA is squishing yarn all day long. There were some really gorgeous booths that I truly wanted to spend all day in! There were a lot of indie dyers at this year's show: Anzula, Baah!, Phydeauxm Sincere Sheep, Sweet Georgia, Zen Yarn Garden...just to name a few! Mira from Baah! allowed me to photograph her booth - look at all of the pretty colors!

Another great thing about TNNA is meeting people face-to-face whom you usually just email. You also get to meet some of your heroes while walking the show floor! That's when fun things like this photo happen, where I take a photo of Stacey Trock (FreshStitches) taking a photo of my pal Allyson (Sweatshop of Love/Holla Knits!) holding up her photo book while Teresa Gregorio (Canary Knits) looks on with amusement.

Fluorescent colors paired with neutrals abounded at this show; I also heard that pom poms are going to big this fall, so consider this your fair warning! Besides that, there were tons of new things to get excited about - far more than I could ever mention in one blog post - but personally, I was quite enamored with the new Nova Cubics that will be out from Knitter's Pride later this summer. The Knitter's Pride folks were kind enough to send me home with some needles to test out, along with a crochet hook from their new Waves collection!

There was lots of spinning inspiration at the show, too. Columbus was the debut of a new spinning event for this fall called Spinzilla, and while I was at the show I signed up to be a captain for Team Louet! Team sign-ups will begin August 1, so you can bet I'll keep you posted. If you want to join my team, just make sure you have some Louet fiber or a Louet wheel - here are a few shots from their booth to tempt you!

I even checked out some of the needlepoint booths and discovered these cute little zipper pouch kits from Alice Peterson which are great for beginners and have everything you need to get started (bonus: they also require no finishing).

I hope you enjoyed my TNNA Recap - I wish I could have mentioned (or remembered to photograph) all of the things I saw that struck my fancy, because this is really the tip of the proverbial iceberg! Luckily, there is an excellent blog post on the FreshStitches blog that manages to fill in some of the blanks - click here to check it out!

I will be sharing some book and product reviews in the weeks to come, so if you haven't followed my blog with Bloglovin yet, now is a great time to sign up!