STITCHES Texas 2015

Last weekend, I was at STITCHES Texas, back in the very far corner in booth 124 with my patterns and yarn. This was the first time I've had a booth to myself (I've shared booth space with others before this), and there was a lot of preparation both of the yarn and of deciding how to set up my space. But overall, I'm happy with how my booth turned out, and it was so wonderful to be able to share my work with people who stopped by.

And one person came by wearing her version of my Wife of Bath's Cowl. It was so much fun to see one of my designs "in the wild." That is truly what I love most about designing--seeing what other people make with my patterns--so it was an amazing experience and one I hope to get to have again.

We got to set up on Wednesday and Thursday (with a market preview for the students on Thursday evening). I brought all but the yarn and patterns up on Wednesday.

Here's how I left my booth on Wednesday, with the grid walls and everything else set up.

I came back on Wednesday and added the yarn, samples, and patterns (and a rug).

Samples of my self-striping sock yarn were at the front of the booth.

Half of the "fingering weight wall": Merlin (self-striping sock yarn) on the left, Camelot (MCN) on the upper right, and Perceval on the lower right. Samples of cowls on the bottom left.

The other side of the above wall: Guenevere on the top and Gawain on the bottom. The Don't Blink Illusion Scarf and Hat (samples, patterns, and kits) were in the back corner.

The brown shawl is my Astolat Shawl. The red shawl is the gorgeous Scarlet Ibis, designed by Jennie Santopietro, using my Camelot in Morgan le Fay. There were so many compliments on this shawl over the weekend. Jennie did such a beautiful job with it and I was happy to be able to display it for her. On the back wall, Avalon (the merino/silk DK) was on the top left with Galahad on the bottom left.

Continuing on the back wall was the Lancelot base and then some samples. The hats and cowls from top to bottom are the Lyonet Hat and Lyones Cowl, Palamon Hat and Arcite Cowl, and Chaucer Hat. The shawl on the dress form is Fellowship, from my Gawain's Shield collection.

More shawls from Gawain's Shield. Since the book had just come out, displaying these shawls and the book was one of my main focuses for the booth and they definitely got a lot of attention.

I also had sample copies of PLY Magazine and subscription cards for people to take. (And see, far back corner of the vendor hall!)

The right front of the booth contained my display of patterns. I am so in love with the new format of them (thank you to Elizabeth of Stitch Definition!).

Me! I totally should have had someone else take a picture of me in my booth as I'm not great at taking selfies!

Over the course of the weekend, I did some rearranging of various parts of the booth. I think moving the shawls up here (and moving the Don't Blink Kits over) really drew even more attention to them.

My best seller was the self-striping sock yarn (Merlin). By the end of the weekend, I had sold out completely of two colorways and had just 1-2 skeins left of each of the others. Thank you so much to those of you who bought some (or anything from me!). I hope you have a lot of fun working with it!

One of the things I did was participate in the stitch marker swap. People made stitch markers (both vendors and attendees) and when you saw someone wearing a stitch marker swap button, you exchanged one of your markers for one of theirs. Here's my beautiful collection of stitch markers that I got over the weekend. Isn't it fantastic?!

It's taken me much of this week to "recover" from STITCHES: meaning taking inventory of what came home with me and getting new pictures of my yarn and all of it posted to the shop. Even though I have a lot of inventory in the shop, I do have some undyed yarn that is calling out for color, so I'm looking forward to pulling the dyepots back out and doing some experimenting for some new colorways.