A Knit with Greatness

I’m geeking out so hard right now, y’all! As you read this I am probably on my way to the Arkansas Fiber Arts Extravaganza. It’s a very elaborate name for what I hope will be a great time spent with other knitters and yarn crafters, and which I will probably leave much richer in fiber and poorer in, well, money.

It’s a dirty little secret of mine that even though I’m a professional knitwear designer (now doesn’t that sound fancy?) who has been writing about knitting for a big part of my livelihood for six years now, I have never been to a fiber festival.

(Well, OK, there was that one little local show where I learned how to spin. But that hardly counts. This is the real deal.)

What makes me really excited about this weekend — beyond getting away from home for a couple of days and getting to sleep in a king-sized bed all by myself with no child to come lay on top of me at 5 a.m. — is that a couple of really awesome knitters are going to be there.

I’d say famous knitters, but you’d laugh at me.

Thing is, Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne really are famous knitters. Their blog Mason-Dixon Knitting was one of the first ones I started reading (Kay lives in New York and Ann in Nashville, see? Mason-Dixon.) and they’ve been sharing back-and-forth stories of knitting and life since 2003.

Their blog is so warm and friendly and positive, you’d get swept up in their enthusiasm for knitting even if you weren’t a knitter. I’m so excited to get to meet them, to take a class from them and hear them speak.

And it gives me a chance to share this with you, which never fails to make me laugh. Even if you don’t get all the knitting humor, it’s pretty awesome. “Row by row, stitch by stitch, I was scratchin’ an itch. Pardon me, I didn’t knit that for you.” Love!

And now you know how much of a geek I am. Expect a full report next week.