Friday, June 28, 2013

Knitter's Weekend Part II: TNNA Designer's Lunch Meetup

One of the things I've been wanting to save up to get for a while are a couple of professional memberships/certification programs. It hasn't happened yet, but this weekend while The National Needlearts Association trade show (TNNA) was in Columbus I crashed the party for an informal lunch meetup with a bunch of fellow designers and writers in the industry. There were so many people that I got a bit of sensory overload trying to listen to four conversations at once. I bounced around from one group to another, listening mostly, but still made some great contacts with other designers and industry professionals.

Next year, I should be able to get into the show itself. Technically, I could have this year, but I didn't get my contract for CENSORED until just before the show, and I didn't want to be asking my publisher for badges when nothing had been signed yet. I caught a few glimpses through the doors as people came and went, and it looked amazing! A few years ago when I was an intern for a yarn company part of my job was setting up the booth and trolling the show floor to take in the competition, and it was the most incredible collection of yarn, publishers, and designers I've ever seen. Between Pride and TNNA, this weekend made me happy to live in Columbus--not an easy feat!

Some of you might have gathered that with all of my out and about over the weekend, I missed Typewriter day, which is true, but in a nice coincidence, one of the conversations I was listening to turned to typewriters at one point! A couple of designers were reminiscing to their early days in the industry, when their submissions were done on a typewriter and some of the challenges it posed. I think that by and large most of them are very pleased to have things like Microsoft Word and Photoshop to make patterns and charts easier to put together!

Hopefully, I will have a typecast up for next week, but I need to get the house to myself first. I also injured my hand last week (nothing serious, just a really bad bruise) so it's somewhat difficult for me to lift all 40 pounds of Prince Henry (the KMM) onto my desk right now. I could use Caffrey, the Sterling, but I need to type up the next installment of the Post Club and Henry produces neater text. Although, his keys are a little stiffer and I'm not sure I could manage them right now, at least not for several pages of text anyway. Hopefully in a few days it will be back to normal or near enough that I can get back to work. Just using the computer keyboard/mouse aggravates it (though knitting doesn't seem to be much of a problem, provided I'm not working cables. I wonder why?).

Oh, and in brighter news, the laptop has finally found it's way home, after two weeks away. According to the tech, there's nothing wrong with it. How accurate that statement is, however, remains to be seen.

Don't forget, you've still got a few days to enter the Birthday Contest!

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