Stitches West debrief and Wooden Morels!

Hello readers!

First I will tell you about the Mushroom Swap I participated in with KnitSonya. The idea was for everyone participating in the swap to make five semi identical mushrooms to swap with 5 other people. So essentially five different people would receive the mushrooms you handmade. In return you would receive five different mushrooms from five other people. About forty people participated, meaning there were about 200 mushrooms needing to be swapped. I went to Sonya's house for a local swap party. We helped her divi up the mushrooms and pack them cuz that's A LOT of mushrooms!

So Adrienne, how come you have so much time to make mushrooms?! Um I don't! I actually worked late at night, early in the morning, at lunch, in the SFMOMA wood shop, you name it, I would try to fit in time even while preparing for Stitches West 2009 (which was a very bad idea and very bad timing, please see Kristine's post, oops). So really -- I should NOT have committed, but then again how could I let this GOLDEN opportunity pass?! Making mushrooms only to receive them!?! Well Yea!

Here are my mushrooms. I made five Morels out of wood, specifically Walnut. Walnut cut like butter on the lathe, very fun! I first hand turned them with my lathe and then carved out the holey parts and then cut the base.


Morels are known to be very elusive - especially the Black Morels...


Unless you have a hound dog...


Here is the final packaging:


I will show you what I received in another post - so come back soon!

Stitches West 2009 - Santa Clara



Stitches went off without a hitch well...almost. We had borrowed our friend's (Michelle!) van (bless her heart) and we loaded it up to high heaven. Cuz, we are a start up that can't really afford renting a van and/or truck for 5 days, that type of thing. The van itself was seriously a GODSENT, no joke, I almost made Kristine trade in the Civic for an Element after that. You see, in the urban environment everything needs to be small even your vehicle, unless you have kids or a gardening business...so we borrowed a van from a sweet family that has kids. We loaned them our Civic and off we go, or so we think!

I mentioned to Kristine a strange sound on the way to the studio. We both shrugged it off and packed the van with our worker bee and friend WonderMike. In went the six foot wooden display units I made three times (no time for mushroom making, people! doh!), um Alpaca, Yak, Llama, Merino, BFL, Cotton, Flax, Spinning Wheels, Yarn, Fiber, T-shirts, Baskets, the Banner, etc., You get the point!

So we caravanned with WonderMike down the 880 - yes "THE 880" (I am from So Cal) and we are changing to the 237 when I hear a thump thump and a tug on the rear of the van, like a camel was being dragged, no camel or camel fiber, that I could see, so I look at Wonder Mike in my rearview, like "hey man, do you see anything wrong?!" And I can see him rummaging around his car and I think "dude, stop looking for your lost CD, do we have a flat, or a cow, or a bicycle in tow?" So I ask Kristine to call him and he confirms, we may have a FLAT!

OH NO!!!!! Not a flat! We're two exits away from the convention center and we are loaded to the brim! So I pull over and so does WonderMike. Sure enough, a floppy old flat stared at us from the heated asphalt. We all looked at each other and Kristine just laughed silly. Of Course, we are in the middle of the Freeway (Californian no less) and Semis are passing us and FAST! All I could think of was the jalopy in the Beverly Hillbillies intro driving west.

To make a long story short, WonderMike had AAA and I had the know how to fix a flat, so I found the spare, WonderMike and I unloaded the van partially to get to it, we rolled it over to the flat and loosened the lug nuts and the AAA guy showed up and finished the job in five minutes. We were off and running at 30 mph in no time (25 min, go AAA!) I found out later WonderMike had tried to call us but dropped his phone and was looking for it when I tried to confirm visually what was going on, very A-Team of us!

The show was awesome, we met and saw so many of our favorite people. It was the who's who of the knitting world. We of course took advantage of the hot tub - yeah Kristine, go with your bad self! This is what happens if you never want to take a picture of me -you will always be in the pictures as a subject. We did try to felt but without soap it was little tedious, NO we didn't! We do not mix felting and relaxing!

Here is the booth as Kurt and Kristine take a look at it.


Here I am on Saturday, totally exhausted and drinking my margarita and knitting my new hat with my Verb hand spun in the lobby of the Hilton.


Here is Mike and Kathleen at the Fiber Art and Drinking club before we hit up Bobbin's Nest Studio, the LYS of Santa Clara. They had a little party so we went.



All in all we had a very good time. But now I am very tired and need to sleep. But before I do, I need to do a shout out to our working folks at the convention THANK YOU!!!!!!!!:

Marlowe
Kathleen
Michelle
Michael
Kim
Sara E.
Tiffany

And thank you to all of our friends and customers!