New York City: Part 2

I arrived into NYC around 5pm in the evening, the sun was setting as I took a taxi to the Hilton (The largest hotel in NYC btw, and the knitters took up 1/3rd of it, walking around though it seemed like 3/4ths). The trouble with going on these sort of trips is hoping you run into people you know and they don’t mind a bit of company, because while I never mind being alone, I did not come to NYC to be sit by myself the whole time! I was very lucky to run into the team that makes up Bijou Basin Ranch on thursday night. A wonderful husband and wife team, along with the always wonderful Marly from YarnThing fame who (hope I get this right) is creative director for their pattern line, and she has some really wonderful designs with them (including that cabled hooded jacket that I seriously wanted to steal).

Thankfully class started on friday at 8:30 instead of 8:00 (which was still way to early but meant I could wake at 8am and then just rush a bit). I headed off to Jared Flood’s class. I figured if I DID have to wake up early, that was the class to have to do it for. I was not disappointed. Jared is a calm and intelligent teacher. He knows his stuff, and he knows his yarn. He was easy to understand, and draws lots of helpful diagrams as he speaks. One gem form his class, when measuring a sweater, never “smooth” it out/down with your fingers. Instead pat it to smooth it out, otherwise you are stretching the knitting and stitches out and getting a false measurement. The class focus was the percentage system of designing sweaters. Everyone listened carefully for 3 straight hours, and it went by very quickly.

Jared Floor explaining good ways to measure.

Next up, Debbie Bliss in a class focused on designing for babies and how to pick our own motif to put onto a design. I adore Debbie, she’s incredibly sweet. She’s also one of those calming forces. Someone you just can’t possible be stressed out around. Her daughter Nell was also in class helping hand out yarn. Oh yeah! Debbie is the swag queen! I left her class with three glorious balls of Rialto merino, AND her new book! This was incredibly generous of her and I don’t know of any other teacher who did so much.

Debbie Bliss

As an aside, Vogue gave everyone a copy of the Vogue Knitting Encyclopedia. Petite Purls didn’t make the cut (it’s a book that talks about knitting terms but it also names a LOT of people and companies). Maybe in the next print we can win a spot, I like to think we are worthy! Oddly enough some no-longer-in-existence companies where named which I found odd.

That night there was a nice event with drinks and all the teachers in a ballroom, I used the opportunity to dress up because that’s a rare thing around here! I had two glasses of wine and was done! Not enough sleep but enough to keep going. I think there was a market preview this night before the drinks, and I did go and take pics and buy some sewing stuff (last post will be what I got, I don’t normally buy stuff at these sort of things but could not help myself).

Pixie dresses up, alert the media.

Saturday morning I was very able to attend Meg Swansen and Amy’s class. Watching these two women teach together and interact is so fun. Once again, wonderfully calm teachers with loads of amazing information you just want to eat right up. The class focus was knitting with two colors. Meg taught how to hold two colors in your left hand and amy taught how to hold one color in each hand (which I’ve tried and always failed but I LOVED it by the end of class).

Right after class I met with my editor from Potter Craft and had a lovely lunch with her and we worked on the book a bit. After that I had some free time and I kept arguing with myself about purchasing some photography equipment. It’s sold out online, and is new (D7000) and I knew that if anyplace in the world would have it, NYC would. So I called around (knowing B&H was sold out) and caught a few sketchy places, then I wound up finding CameraLand which was about 5 blocks away from the hotel. It was pretty cold out but with my big coat with it’s giant hood, and gloves, it was a lovely walk. The wait list on this particular camera is around 2 months most places. This shop had received 8 camera’s the night before, and only one (brand spankin new) was left. I would recommend getting a camera from B&H or Adorama because they have MUCH better return policies, but given that I would have had to wait so long and I needed the camera to shoot the Summer Petite Purls (and time to get used to it) I took the plunge. It was a highlight to my trip, I’ve been dreaming of a new camera for a very long time. My D80 is over 3 years old, and I only have one lens!

That night was the big “dinner” which was nice, but I definitely preferred the drinks event the night before. Sunday I had left wide open, with a flight out at 5pm. I wanted to leave myself some time to explore NYC, which will conclude in part 3…