All’s quiet on the blog front because I went on a wintertime work vacation. Well, sort of a vacation and sort of work, but mostly fun catching up with friends–and this time Paul wanted to join me. Perhaps because it’s a little pathetic that when I fly away for weekends, I rarely see more than the inside of a convention center and my sweet, sweet overpriced hotel bed. It’s true.

Here was the view from my hotel desk on the first morning of TNNA, which was in Long Beach CA. I flew out, and Paul drove out to meet me. I took a grand total of maybe 3 pictures that can be called “of TNNA”, so I’ll go with those first. Here’s one of me and Doreen–we used to work together at Soho Publishing and going to their booth at shows still gives me a warm, homey feeling.

And I finally got to meet Erin Slonaker, aka Pepperknit,  the new editor of Yarn Market News (an industry publication for LYS owners and the like–sign up to get it if you don’t already). Unbeknownst to me at the time, she also edited Little Crochet and you might know her from her days at Crochet Today magazine.

I also got to spend some time with Robyn Chachula and her husband, who had the same “me too!” whim that Paul did and came out for the trip. We set them up on a man-date but I ended up tagging along because I like art and architecture too (and it was easy to wake up at 7 am due to the time change). We went to explore the buildings in downtown LA one morning before the show (but Robyn had to teach, boo!). It was like being back in NYC in a way, the colors and urban scenes were calling me!

We spent a lot of time at the Frank Gehry’s Disney building–which was located behind an eyesore of a parking lot. Makes for a nice juxtaposition, though.

And here’s one of the zillion shots I took up close. I’ll sift through them all one of these days.

All that left me feeling distracted that day, though. Oh, and I had a cold the whole time which I’m sure was utterly charming. Regardless,, it was fun to fondle new yarns and catch up with my peers. It’s a little odd to not work directly with any of your peers, so these biannual events are really important for me, just from a sanity perspective.

Once the convention was over we stayed in LA for two days and then drove back home. I did have time to get one of these in-n-out burgers though.

And we saw some cool stuff on the way back, which I’ll save for another post. In between the cool stuff was a lot of nothing (pretty nothing, different-looking nothing, but still, a whole lot of nothing!) so I took the opportunity to do some work. Here’s what my mobile work station looked like, with motifs blurred to protect the innocent.

Spending three days in a car sure is a good way to get a bunch of motifs cranked out– I would crochet 12 or 18 a day, then weave in ALL of the ends in batches. This way I will have less of a monstrous beast when I finish this secret project.  By my calculations, there would have been over 300 ends with this one, but it didn’t seem so bad to weave in 50 or 60 ends at a time, in small chunks, as a captive in the car. Keep that in mind next time you’re planning a road trip.