I arrived home from Columbus yesterday morning, but having gotten up at 4:20 am and then traveling all morning, I didn’t feel quite like myself again until today. Having gotten a good night’s sleep, however, I’m now ready to rehash a few key points about my weekend and all the wonderful stuff I saw and the wonderful people I met.

A few highlights from Market itself (i.e., the things that made me smile):

• I finally got to meet Lorna (formerly of Lorna’s Laces) and enjoyed telling her that it was her yarn that got me started on sock knitting.
• Mom introduced me to Helene of K1C2, and we got to see (and fondle) their new sock yarn, Soxx Appeal. It’s a wonderfully stretchy sock yarn with 96% merino, 3% nylon, and 1% elastic, and the colors are fantastic. (A flyer with their new yarns, including the Soxx Appeal, is available in PDF format here.)
• More sock yarn was acquired for the store from Pagewood Farm, and I swear, I couldn’t take my eyes off the colors. They had lots of stuff, but what interested me was their sock yarns – there was a bamboo/merino/nylon blend that I particularly loved. It’s all hand-dyed, and the colors are spectacular. I couldn’t stop petting the hanks.
• We also saw some fabulous new non-wool sock yarns this weekend. One was Luscious from Kollage Yarns, which is 63% cotton / 37% nylon. It’s squishy and soft, but it looks like it’s pretty durable, too. Choosing colors to stock was hard, but between me and mom, we selected a number of great colors to stock for the store. It’s nice, too, because they had a pretty wide selection of browns, greys, and dark blues that are perfect for men’s socks (or at least those men who don’t like wearing lime green and magenta… silly men).
• More non-wool sock yarn (among other things) was acquired over at the Crystal Palace booth. Along with their popular Panda Cotton sock yarn, they’ve got a new corn fiber sock yarn, Maizy, in an absolutely huge assortment of colors – 14 prints and 17 solids, and mom was persuaded to buy ‘em all. (I’m particularly in love with #9759 Iguana and #1002 Birch Bark.)
• Another booth we hit that was a huge success was that of Neighborhood Fiber Co. They’re a new hand-dyeing fiber company out of DC, and not only were their yarns and colorways absolutely stunning, but the girls themselves are so sweet and friendly, too. I think we spent longer there than we did at any other booth except for the big ones like Rowan, where there was lots of re-ordering to be done. Mom did order some stuff, but honestly, I don’t know what all she ordered, since I was busy chatting with Karida (owner/dyer) about which new sweater designs look good on girls with larger figures. She was the one who actually recognized my Sahara because she had done a Google image search and had stumbled on photos of it when it was a WIP. She was happy to see that it’s a sweater that does, in fact, work for those of us with larger busts. I think I probably slowed mom down a bit because we were chatting so much, but they (both Karida and her partner, Erika) were just so friendly and pleasant to talk with!
• We got to meet Cookie A and see all her gorgeous socks up close and personal (the photos floating around the web honestly don’t do them justice at all!). She expressed her concern to us that people wouldn’t recognize her when she wasn’t holding up a long leg model (and shared a funny quip about how earlier in the weekend she had been carting a poster tube somewhere and felt very natural doing so). Mom assured her that she had a very recognizable face and that she was sure people would know immediately who she was, even if it was only by the display of socks in front of her.
• I also had a rather unexpected and delightful viewing of a sweater while I was outside on a cigarette break on Sunday. I had stepped outside for just a moment for a smoke break when two women from Interweave sat down at the table next to mine. And these lovely women were wearing sweater models! I did a double-take when I saw the Bella Blouse (the link is to the PDF of the free pattern). That sweater is high up on my projects queue, and it was wonderful to see it in person – it made me want to knit it up even more!
• Another new yarn I encountered was Love from South West Trading Company. Mom opted not to carry it in the store because she didn’t think it would sell well with her clientèle, but she agreed with me that it was very nice. It’s a blend of 30% silk / 70% bamboo that knits up to 5 sts / 1″, it comes in 14 very lovely solids with fun names like “Mulder & Scully,” “Harold & Maude,” and “Buttercup & Wesley,” and it felt absolutely sinful. Even though mom’s not carrying it, I may have to track some of it down elsewhere at some point… I really loved it.
• We also hit the Claudia Hand Painted Yarns booth, and I helped mom pick out 10 different colorways of their silk laceweight for the store (that was hard… choosing only 10 colors from their huge collection? Nearly impossible.) I really liked their new linen yarn, too.

It’s a long list, and it was two very long days. But I had so much fun, and I’m constantly surprised by just how many people know my mom. It wasn’t even that they had to glance at her name tag and then say “Oh Meg from Yarn Expressions, so good to see you again!” No, they’d walk right up to her and give her a hug. My mommy’s one of the popular kids! :) We ate well, too, on this trip – succulent steak one night, insanely good Indian take-out for lunch one day, and yummy unagidon (eel fillets over rice) at a Japanese restaurant next door to the hotel another night. It was hard to go back to my el-cheapo meals last night! :)

And so now, I’m in the process of revamping the Yarn Expressions website. At Christmas, we got a WordPress blog set up on the front page, which effectively replaces her need for an email newsletter. Now we’re working on implementing a shopping cart system, so we spent Sunday night discussing ideas and working out the rudimentary details. I spent a good portion of yesterday installing the new software and playing around with all the options, and today’s task is to dive into the templates and start figuring out how to customize it all. It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s also going to be fun, and hopefully when I’m done, the online store will be awesome. Stay tuned for that!