TNNA Friday 2009

Above, is me with Marcy Smith, Editor of Interweave Crochet magazine. She is wearing a design by Kristin Omdahl. I am wearing, yep, you guessed it, the Super Speedy Shrug!

Above is me with Kathy Merrick, designer, and author. She has a new book coming out Crochet in Color coming out in October with Interweave Press.

Friday at TNNA, I arrived in Columbus in the afternoon and did a quick look around. The "Market" didn't open until Saturday and Sunday. Friday afternoon there is a table display of many of the vendors and their featured items for us to look at. There is a "Sample It" area where retailers (not designers) are allowed to go and "sample" the new yarns. Also, there is a "Great Wall of Yarn". The Great Wall is fun because the yarn companies hang 4-5 of their newest yarns from these kiosks along with little swatches, and there are strands of each yarn that you can take and bring home. They give you a guide book to all the yarns on the Great Wall and you can tape your strand of yarn onto the guide book if you want to remember what it was! There were probably 100 that I could have taken, but I don't like them all (gasp) and I'm already familiar with some, and so I just took what I wanted to remember for later.

Friday night was also the Fashion Show. I had not been to the Fashion Show before so I was anxious to see it. The 96 knitwear items were amazing and inspiring. The 4 crochet items were too. Yarn companies sponsor the items entered in the Fashion Show with a fee. They use the fashion show to highlight their new products and stimulate sales to yarn stores. Just like other garment fashion shows you may have seen, some of the items are "show pieces" designed to have a strong visual impact all the way to the last row. Last year, the fashion show ended up on YouTube, so, we'll see if a link can be found for it. Go to Youtube and search "TNNA Summer show" if you are interested in seeing January's show.

Ok, more another day on TNNA Saturday, and TNNA Sunday :)