Day 2, Museums and TNNA

Hey all, sorry this trip is not as exciting sounding as my past trips to Alaska. But it is quite exciting from this end. Yesterday I spent the day at TNNA, and Dom went to the "guy museums" at Balboa Park. I didn't want him to be bored while I was working, and we won't have time to go to all of the museums togther during our remaining days here, so after dropping me off at the convention center, Dom headed over to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum and the San Diego Automotive Museum.

He said he took pictures and put them on this computer, but I can't find them. But you can check out our full trip photo album here (click on this photo to go to the album):

San Diego California

I didn't teach anything at TNNA on Saturday, so I had time to walk around the show floor and have meetings. I am SO glad this is not a show that sells to customers on the showfloor, because I'd have broken my "knit from my stash" vow 100 times already. What an amazing experience though, and shop owners must have the worst time figuring out what to put on their shelves. It's really important though, because the choices of the shop owner are what make each shop unique and their personality shows through clearly as soon as you enter a shop.

In the morning, I first went to the Designer and Teacher meeting to find out what kinds of things TNNA is planning to help desgigners and teachers. I never joined in the past because it seemed like the organization's focus was so much on wholesaler and retailer members. But they recently started a designer teacher section, and had some pre-show online marketing along with a group blog, that seemed to get a lot of attention over the last couple of weeks. Everyone at the meeting had great ideas for getting designers and teachers more involved in TNNA and in finding ways that TNNA can help promote designers and teachers, so I think it's going to be an exciting year from that standpoint. I'll be signing up for the TNNA Designer yahoo group as soon as I get home and can use my real computer again.

I also met with editors from a couple of different publishers yesterday morning, and have some new project ideas that you'll be hearing about on my main blog over the next few months. I also got word that my Kitty Knits book was accepted by a publisher, so WOOHOOO! I'll be getting the details of that worked out over the next few weeks, and it will be coming out in January of 2008.

It is alway fun to meet my email colleaguges and friends face to face, and that was my main adventure yesterday. I met at least 20 people that I've been talking to in email, and now we actually have met. I love email and hate the phone, but face to face meetings are by far the best, fastest, and easiest way to get things done. I got more accomplished in 5 hours yesterday than I could in a month of emails.

After lunch (and the convention center, amazingly, had a terrific pear salad with dried cranberries and nuts in it available at the cafe!), I had a book signing for Arctic Lace in the Unicorn booth. They had two book signings going on at the same time, and I was scheduled across from Lilly Chin. And, another WOOHOOO!, my line seemed to be as long as hers. Granted, it was hard to tell who was in what line, because it was so mobbed and some people were getting both books signed, but I signed all of the books they had arranged for my signing in a flash. I couldn't believe it, actually. Because I'd never been to TNNA before, I had no idea what to expect from firsthand experience. Everyone had told me that there were huge lines for the book signings, but I wasn't sure I believed them. As it turns out, they were not exaggerating.

After the book signing, I met with Joanne Turcotte, the design director from Plymouth Yarn and Cheryl Potter, owner of Cherry Tree Hill Yarn. I design for both of these yarn companies on a regular basis, and I was thrilled to see so many of my designs hanging up in Cheryl's booth.

Well, I hope that gives you some idea of the excitement I'm feeling here. I couldn't write last night becasue I fell asleep. This morning I have a couple of last meetings, one with an editor and two with authors whose work I'm editing, and then I'm done with work for this trip. This afternoon, we're heading up to Escondido for a party with some old friends.