Well, what can I say other than the Interweave Crochet issue with my design is finally out? Except that I will muster a…
HOLY COW YOU GUYS, MY DESIGN IS IN A MAGAZINE! THAT IS MY NAME ON THAT PAGE!
My apologies. Let me collect myself. While I do that, here are some images from the magazine showing off the design:
The 2009 Florida Fiber-In was my first event of its kind. It took place on World Wide Spin in Public day, which I wasn’t aware of until I arrived at the hotel and checked my Twitter account. Several people I follow kept tagging their 140-character posts with #wwsip and I kept thinking, “what the hell are they sipping?” It eventually hit me later as I saw more and more wheels appear. What a sight that was, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I started the day early–too early for my taste, but I made it safe and sound. Thankfully I drove down the day before and bunked at a friend’s house that was only 30 or so minutes away in St Petersburg. I made sure to bring a camera with me, but didn’t think even once about bringing any crochet with me at all. I don’t know where my head was, but as it was my first event, I didn’t know if I’d have time to just sit and crochet anywhere. As it turns out I would have spent a lot of time starting and stopping, particularly when I finally caught up with a lovely lady I’ll tell you about a bit later on.
The event began with the market setting up. Vendors were arranging their items, attendees were already claiming their spots at the tables in the market and setting up their wheels or pulling out their projects. There was a series of demos throughout the day, and I arrived at the hotel just as the first was supposed to start. Things were running a bit behind, so thankfully I didn’t miss anything.
The first demo was on dyeing sock yarn by Celena of Rocket Yarn. Celena was fabulous, and showed us two of her techniques while chatting and answering questions–one was called plasma dip dyeing, and the other was a lot like finger painting. She uses some interesting methods that I, personally, haven’t tried before, so it was a real treat to see another independent dyer “do their thing”.
If you get a chance to ever purchase any of her yarn, or watch one of her demo’s, take a class, et cetera–do. You definitely will not be sorry. Be careful, though, as I think a few of the ladies who attended may have been bitten by the dyeing bug and went home to start playing around as soon as the weekend was over. There was some serious note-taking in that room. If I had thought to bring paper and pen, I may have been taking notes as well.
I had about 15-30 minutes before the next demo, so I took my time walking around the market some more. I gave in and purchased a skein of 100% Blue-Faced Leicester from Celena in shades of blue that are just too lovely. I was planning on keeping it for myself, but I may end up giving it as a gift to someone. We’ll see, as it wholly depends on how selfish I’m feeling when I think about it next.
Let me just say that, since I didn’t really know anyone at the event, and didn’t have anyone go with me, I did a lot of hiding behind the camera. There, that clearly needed to get off my chest, and serves as fair warning for those who may feel I publish too many photos in this post. I’m actually holding back–ha!
The next demo rolled around, and while I wasn’t really planning on attending it, I did plan on visiting the person who was doing the demonstrating. Here enters Tracie Barrett–miss TracieCrochets herself. She was setting up for her demo, people were already piling in and trying to max out the 52 occupancy limit, and I was steeling my nerves up to go say hello.
Trust me when I say that I am awkward in social situations unless I already know the person. While Tracie and I have chit-chatted online, that does not necessarily make us fast friends and allow me to talk easily with her in person. So, I pulled up my Big Girl Pants and went over and said, “Tracie? Hi, it’s Brianna”. And that, dear readers, was the beginning. The awkwardness I was expecting was over after a minute, and I spent the whole time watching her demo, taking photos and expelling a huge sigh of relief. There was a kinship–here we were, two crocheters in a sea of knitters and spinners, and one of us was going to be showing how to make amigurumi.
And show them she did…
Do you recognize the top Tracie is wearing? It’s a Doris Chan design from Everyday Crochet! It was in a lovely lilac color which looked great on Tracie.
Tracie and I spent the rest of the afternoon together. We went and had Korean with some people she knew, which was my first experience with Korean food. Not bad! Would definitely try it again.
After our lunch break, we went and spent some time in the lobby of the hotel, where Tracie received an impromptu drop-spindle lesson via a lovely woman named Diane. Here you can see them finally getting some gorgeous fiber onto their spindles and working on the park and draft method…
This is where we met up with Vashti Braha and her adorable son. Vashti and I greeted each other with a hug, though we’d never met (she’s just that type of person you feel comfortable giving a hug to on your first in-person greeting), then we chatted about the sad demise of The Crochet Side podcast. Pretty soon she and her son were distracted by Diane and Tracie’s spinning and had to get in on the action.
Eventually both Tracie and I were winding down–too much excitement in one day for us, I guess. I really only had the time to spend 1/2 the day there anyway, but it was a really full 1/2 day. We took one last whirl around the market, where we both picked up some spinning fiber, and then we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.
I can, with ease and no pretense, state that I had a fantastic time. I will admit that I almost didn’t make the drive to Sarasota, that I almost chickened out. A good friend kicked me in the butt, though, and told me I’d regret it if I didn’t go. She was right. I would have regretted having missed meeting all the people I managed to connect with. I would have regretted not being surrounded by ~100 like-minded people. I would have regretted not grabbing one of these guys…
I received an email yesterday from Interweave requesting a bio/byline from me. This is the first time I’ve ever had to write a bio for a publication; the first time I’ve had to be somewhat serious and tell the little girl in me to NOT put how I like to twirl toy guns.
I let the email sit for 24 hours before opening up Notepad. I probably sat there for 10 minutes in silence, terrified of the blank screen. It’s the same feeling when I sit down to write short stories, poetry, sketch…frozen in time and stuck. Eventually I snapped out of it and came to the decision to freewrite–let it all flow organically out of me, from the heart, through the fingers, onto the keyboard.
What I had wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. I edited a bit, removed a sentence, added it back, removed it again, tweaked the beginning and fiddled with wording. Finally, I just had to say the hell with it. If it’s not what they’re looking for they’ll let me know, right?
So, in case it’s tweaked before the issue goes to print, here is what I sent them…
Brianna is the woman behind The Crochet Side (www.thecrochetside.com), a blog about her crochet ups and downs; and behind The Yarn Side (www.theyarnside.com), a small hand-painted/hand-dyed yarn line. She doesn’t claim to be a master of any one thing, but she’s pretty good at a few. Her first love was crochet; her second love was dyeing yarn. Now she tries her hardest to combine the two while staying cool in an all too hot Florida.
Playful, right? Not awful, not great…definitely not a piece of literature, but whose byline really is? That’s not really the job of a byline, I suppose. But telling a quick 3rd-person story, and attracting the reader into wanting to pay attention to that author/designer/et-cetera–that’s what we want. I hope what I’ve written is good enough to do that. Bring readers here; bring readers to The Yarn Side.
I can’t wait for the Winter ‘09 Preview to go live. I can’t wait to share that with you all. I can’t wait to see my name in print. Sounds sort of self-centered of me, doesn’t it? I always imagined myself to be published, but not like this; I wanted to write books, and here I am putting my stamp on crochet patterns? Well. The twisted paths we find ourselves on.
I wish my grandfather was alive to see all of this come to fruitionl, but I–well, let’s not get into a discussion about an afterlife. I know he’d be proud of me. I know he already was. I get to share it with my family that’s still with me, with my friends, with you.
September 18-20, the Florida Fiber-In will be held in Sarasota, Florida. Will you be attending? It’s a free event ($15 donation suggested to help offset costs), with shopping and free demos/classes. It’s about a 5 hour drive for me, but I’m looking forward to attending and meeting new friends!
I’m going to try and meet up with Julie, of 1,000 Petals Yarn, since she was a podcast listener and her yarn was the inspiration for the Jules pattern. She will be vending at the event, so maybe I’ll support her and purchase a couple of skeins I’ve had my eyes on for a while. I didn’t learn about the event soon enough so I wasn’t able to throw my hat in to be a vendor, for The Yarn Side, but there’s always next year! It’ll be nice to get to know the people first, and just enjoy the event as an attendee.
Here are some demos that I’m looking forward to:
Celena Crews, of “Rocket Yarn” – Two Sock Yarn Dyeing Methods
Rebecca Bowen, of Sunshine Knit Designs - Spinning with Silk Hankies
Ginger Clark, of Hanks Yarn and Fiber - Color Spinning
Ginger Clark, of Hanks Yarn and Fiber – Let’s take a test Drive
If you’re in the area, it’d be great to meet up! Let me know if you’re going to make it and we can put together some sort of signal or handshake.
I wanted to be published, and that’s going to happen, but now is the stressful time. Now is made up of the moments after the box of yarn arrives and I have to actually crochet this thing.
This thing is huge.
See that? I’m crocheting something for that giant 36″ monster. That’s a lot of crocheting considering I’m not just crocheting a giant circle. You’ll see what I mean when you purchase my issue of Interweave Crochet after it comes out.
I can’t believe I get to say that. MY ISSUE. The issue in which I am PUBLISHED. Yes! *fist pump*
So there’s this box full of yarn, with colors and bags and I have to use it, keep track of it, make sure dog hair doesn’t make its way into it, and I’m still in shock.
I need to snap out of this, though, because while I have this big project, I also have to work 8-10 hours five days a week, part-time University every day of the week (practically), and The Yarn Side to try and keep up with. I don’t even have time to podcast, really, and there have been thoughts entering my head that I should put that on hiatus. Then I worry about how people would feel about my doing that.
What to do, what to do.
Right now my only decision is to just try and keep moving forward. Try to work a little of everything everday, not allow myself to become so involved with any one thing for too long, or I focus too much on it and become drained.
How do you best handle a large number of To-Do’s and the stress that comes with it?
Here we are, after a lengthy absence, and I have some news to share.
My absence began with my grandfather becoming ill, which weeks later turned into an absence because my grandfather passed away. My family has been dealing with all the things families deal with when a loved one is no longer around. We’re all slowly readjusting to life without him, which is hard, but harder when I think about how something so exciting that just happened is the first thing I’m not able to share with him.
That exciting news is that I received word that I’ll have a design published in Interweave Crochet, Winter ‘09! I sent two swatches, and received an email from the editor that they want one of the two, and that they would like the finished pieced to be much larger than my initial plans. It’s super exciting, and I can’t wait to get started, but we still need to finalize the contract and discuss yarns.
So what have you been up to while I’ve been gone?
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