The TNNA (The National Needle Arts Organization) trade show is an opportunity to become more educated in the field of needle arts, yarns, and fashion/market trends. It is also a dynamic area to meet designers and manufacturers and see the new and innovative ideas they have come up with.
My first stop was the "Crochet! Magazine" booth. Stefanie Girard had brought along the Amineko dolls with her which are two crochet cats, named Stan Amineko and Jane Doe Amineko.
It makes sense they would start off their day at this particular booth. They are darling to see in person and I enjoy photographing their antics whenever I can. By the way, if you want to make your own, then you should check out the book "Hello My Name is Ameniko by Nekoyama". The book has great photographs and straight forward "Step by Step" directions. There are also some fun suggestions for personalizing your own Amineko cat with accessories.
The next stop was the "Lorna's Laces" booth. This booth had yummy colors and the specialty yarns are hand dyed.
Below is a picture of the wall of yarn at the back of the booth which was so colorful. Of course they had some fun knitted critters, so we took some pictures of theirs and the Amineko dolls on the wall of color.
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| Aminko |
"Reversible Knits", "Little Lacy Knits", "Modular Knits" and many more. Iris also appeared on the television show "Knitty Gritty" and others.
The next stop was the "Alpaca With A Twist" booth. I enjoy working with Alpaca, the yarns are not only beautiful but I know that my project will keep me warm when I wear it.
Speaking of someone else who likes to use Alpaca yarns in her designs, Robyn Chachula was at the show and was scheduled to do a book signing.
Of course, I just had to have a copy of Robyn Chachula's newest book called "Baby Blueprint Crochet". If you have a chance the next time you are in a book store, check her books out. She is a very talented designer and her patterns are very easy to follow. I highly recommend to spend a few minutes to peruse the books because you may just be surprised at how appealing her designs are.....and......maybe you will get caught up the "create something" bug like I was.
By the way, Robyn has a really cool blog called "Crochet by Faye" at:
http://www.crochetbyfaye.blogspot.com/
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| Robyn Chachula |
As you can guess, I am going to make the cute robot toy "Robot Burt" on page 135. The baby booties and her other projects are darling to see in person.
We stopped by the "Unicorn Books and Crafts, Inc." booth to see the best possible selection of craft books ever! They are distributors for needlework and textile craft books and sell to retail stores. They had a bunch of these book towers with the biggest selection of craft and textile books ever.
The best part of this booth is that they had book signings all day long. This was a great opportunity to speak to the authors and ask questions about their books and designs. I got to spend time with Carri Hammett and speak to her about her new book. Carri Hammett owns a successful yarn shop and has an extensive background in fiber arts. She wanted to design patterns that were accessible by knitters of a variety of knitting experience levels..while still being stylish.
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| Carri Hammett |
If you want to know about Carri, the Craftside blog has a mini video interview with Carri on their blog site. Plus they have a list of the many different titles that Carri has written.
This post was amazing! Thanks for sharing...
ReplyDeleteOh I wish I could attend to one of these expos just for the fun to see all the yummy yarns!