To start with...

Wow. I am getting to posting this late. I do apologize for that, but I hope you will understand. After I returned form TNNA a week ago Monday night, I was home Tuesday and Wednesday before taking off Thursday morning for an out of state swim meet in Nevada. It didn't give me a lot of extra time to catch up, I'm afraid! I have all sorts of blog fodder, but I'm going to start here with some baby steps. :)

So.... On to my TNNA trip! It was my first time to the Columbus show and I flew into Canton, OH to drive in with Anne Hanson, who, in my opinion, is completely and utterly wonderful. I so enjoy spending time with her! I spent the night at Anne's and then, the next day we took off, with Anne's incredibly cool friend (and now assistant) Beckie driving. We had a great running joke that weekend, btw, since Beckie's name tag said Becie and people kept asking her about the spelling of her name. We all decided that it was her alter ego, and, as "BC", she could pretty much do whatever she wanted. :)

After the drive in, we met up with Paul and Kristi from Eleganza Yarns for dinner. Anne and I have both taught at their Indie Artist Celebration, and they are fabulous people! After dinner, we headed over to the Hyatt lobby, where much knitting and fun was happening. You have probably seen Alisha's (from Alisha Goes Around) knitted polar bear? Here she is finishing it up before the floor show opened the next day, while Sarah and Mary-Heather from Ravelry finished up the crocheted bunting for their booth.

I have to say that it was the most creative use of a taxidermy head that I've ever seen! Brilliant.

Here's Ysolda-Bear taking a little break. I almost fell over laughing when I saw that tongue sticking out.

The next day brought all sorts of wandering about the show floor. We stopped by Lorna's Laces to say hello and I got this gorgeous skein of sock yarn made with Outlast.

I want to know if it will control temperature as a shawl! We shall see. :)

Since we work from home without a lot of contact within the business, it was time to meet and greet and say hello to friends we are only able to see once or twice a year. Here's Vicki Stiefel, who is a dear dear friend, and who lives in California - Southern California - and who I never see except at TNNA.

She's wearing my small Taygete. What you don't see is that Norah Gaughan was sitting beside her and actually had arranged the shawl around Vicki's neck. Vicki asked me to snap a pic so she could see what it looked like. But did it occur to me to snap Norah as well? While sitting at a table eating lunch with her? (Well watching her eat - I had already eaten but wasn't about to miss this!) No. Of course I didn't! I was utterly overwhelmed by sitting so near such greatness. :sigh: It was a wonder I wasn't completely gibbering, so I thank the powers-that-be for small favors.

We wandered on and saw the finished polar bear looking natty in its nice blue scarf.

And Alisha gave us boxes and told us to fill them! I was tying to keep it to a minimum so I could get it all in my luggage, but I did walk away with some beauties! Just look at this mauve!

I was in a bit of a red mood that day, I guess, but Alisha does incredible reds!

And just look at this dark purple!

We stopped by Kollage Yarns (I used their Milky Whey yarn on my Taygete's Spring Ascot pattern - YUM) where I picked up some Creamy

and some new Riveting worsted weight (made from recycled jeans).

I met tons of people I had never met before, but did I snap pics of them? No! My head was not totally in the game, to put it kindly. I met Hannah Fettig, Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark, Angela Tong, Cecily Glowik MacDonald, and Bonne-Marie Burns, to name a few. (I also had long and interesting conversations with Teva Durham and Clara Parkes while I was there. It was a very inspiring show.)

Saturday evening, we headed over to a social media presentation with the Ravelry and XRX peeps, plus Gwen Bortner and a hilariously funny and talented cross stitcher whose name I have, by now, completely forgotten. Here's Kimberly Reynolds speaking while Benjamin Levisay, Gwen Bortner, Sarah Bible and Mary-Heather Cogar look on.

I thought it was appropriate to tweet it while listening, since we were, of course, listening to a talk about social media. Hee. It was a great talk, btw, and I know I walked away from that presentation having learned a lot.

Off to dinner went we. The convention center is in a bit of a gourmet ghetto of fabulous food. Laura Nelkin was pulling up reviews as we walked by places, and we were all taking turns asking if they had room for all of us. Nope! So we chose our favorite place (Lemongrass) and waited there. We might have been a little silly. Anne and I were snapping dueling pics of one another.

Laura and Sarah (Ysolda's super fabulous assistant) were deep in conversation.

It was totally worth the wait. Just look at that beautiful crunchy almond roll! Clara Parkes recommended it and it was delicious!

It was late when we finished and we hoped to get a little Jeni's Ice Cream, since Beckie and I had never had it. But the line was around the corner and we couldn't face it. Jeni's would have to wait!

Sunday morning, Anne had a trunk show at the Ravelry booth.

I, admittedly, slept in a bit. And then I wandered the show floor and came across this hilarious and wonderful display.

Isn't that cute?!

I took the requisite picture of Rick Mondragon's fabulous shoes (these are completely beaded).

I found Takako struggling to remove a safety pin from her lovely sweater, so I gave her a shawl pin. She turned around and told me to pick a skein of yarn. So I did!

This is her Bamboo lace weight. I love this grey!

I found a booth completely full of felt balls.

Now I just want to trim everything with felt balls! Someone please stop me.

I finally met Roxanne from Zen Yarn Garden and look at the perfect green yarn she gave me!

It wasn't named, so she's calling it "Romi's Garden." Is that not absolutely and completely cool?!

I stopped by Buffalo Gold and picked up a fun little skein of tencel and buffalo. In my favorite color too. :)

And then? Then Anne, Beckie and I decided to indulge. Big time. We had Jeni's Ice Cream and a Belgian waffle apiece for lunch. By the time I remembered to take a picture, this was all that was left.

I had always been skeptical about Jeni's, since it seemed to be so popular to find her ice cream incredible. But really? This was one of those times that the hype was absolutely totally and completely deserved. Wow. That's all I can really say. That and, while driving back to Canton that evening, I bought Jeni's new book on amazon.com.

We finished lunch and headed back to see a couple of other people at the show before leaving. We expected to be on the road fairly quickly, but when the announcement came that the show floor was closing, we were still talking to Iris Schreier in the ArtYarns booth. Oops. But her love of quality yarn and fiber is absolutely captivating! I have some samples from her to swatch.

And also some of her incredible Silk Pearl.

Neither Anne nor I could believe how beautifully it holds up to petting and being shown over and over. Her display pieces were still perfect, with not a bit of fuzz on them.

And off we went, back to Canton. I stayed the night with Anne and we petted her incredible yarn stash (not pictured here to protect the innocent). And that's that! I was off the next day back to California. Whew. It was a fabulous time; I just wish it happened more often. Though I don't know that my boys would be all that happy if it did. ;)