We escaped the cold and wet snow in Vancouver last weekend to Phoenix for the TNNA Winter Show. It was such a complete 180 in terms of weather, but it did not go unappreciated. I love wearing flip flops in January.
After all these years, we finally debuted our beloved SweetGeorgia Yarns at our first ever TNNA booth. We brought Tough Love dyed up in every single colour, as well as all fourteen of our base yarns. We had buttons and fibre… and Schacht was so awesome as to lend us a brand new Sidekick spinning wheel for the weekend!
Both Teresa and I managed to convince our husbands (Hubert and Dan) to join us on the trip, which was a great thing because we really really appreciated their help. And I think Hubert got hooked on spinning over the weekend too… he’s considering refining his spinning skills to spin laceweight so that Teresa can knit it. A perfect combo, I think.
This being our first show, we really didn’t know what to expect. From shipping things ahead of time, to setting up on Friday, to three days of sales meetings… it all worked out better than I had hoped. As we took off from YVR on Thursday morning, I still hadn’t received confirmation that our yarn shipments had arrived in PHX and it was SUPER stressful worrying about whether we would have ANYTHING to show in our booth. But as Teresa, Hubert and I touched down three hours later, I got a notification that our parcels arrived… just in time. We picked up our rental car and headed to a 2-bedroom condo that we had booked (so much more relaxed and less expensive than staying at a hotel). Dan joined us on Friday to help with the booth setup and the Sample It event.
The weekend went remarkably well and I was so happy that we finally met some of the yarn shop owners we’ve been working with already, and also so happy to meet new shops that we’ll be working with this year. Our booth was just a hop skip and a jump away from Deep South, so we got to see a ton of extremely talented designers every day… Grace Akhrem, Anne Kuo Lukito, Pam Powers, Ysolda, CocoKnits and Wendy Bernard from Knit and Tonic. Stephannie Tallent, who is about to launch her gorgeous new book “California Revival Knits“, also hung out with us at the booth.
We were really buoyed by the wonderful and positive response we received about our booth and about coming out to TNNA. Clara Parkes from Knitter’s Review even stopped by to chat! I’m sure we will do what we can to make it to Columbus in June. Despite all the anxiety and stress around shipping and deadlines, there’s really nothing that beats meeting up with knitters in real life. My reward for all this hard work? A couple scoops of Late Night Snack (never seen it in stores until last week!).
