Conference

As I started to type up what I wrote on Tuesday evening and Wed morning, I realized it was rather boring to anyone who wasn't there awaiting the start of the conference.
So, let's skip down the page a little. Wednesday was Professional Development Day, a chance to learn more about crochet professionals such as designers, contract stitchers and pattern editors, and magazine & book editors.
I met Dee Stanziano and Drew Emborsky, who took pictures. I know that Dee was able to blog each day, as she brought her laptop along. I forgot that I had my new digital camera along at first. By Friday I started to take some pictures, now I need time to upload them.
!!Waving to everyone I met!!
Meanwhile, back at the conference, the tables were piled with yarns, needles, hooks, and tape measures. During the Welcomes, we're told that they knew we couldn't just sit there and listen, we were going to be crocheting anyway, so the materials were provided and we were asked to make 12" squares for Warm Up America. Before the conference was over, the squares were to be joined to make afghans to donate. How did we do? Hey, remember it's only Wed. in my story, you have to wait till Saturday night, just like the rest of us!
We had a welcome by Marty Miller, then an interesting talk with slides by Nancy Nehring on "32 Ways to Crochet", lots of beautiful lace. On other days, several of us did mention the shortage of information and pictures about Tunisian. This was followed by a talk by Tammy Browning-Smith on legal aspects of a business -kind of an overview on patents, trademarks and copyrights. There was a great lunch, and the opportunity to chat with fellow crochet professionals. The afternoon session consisted of 3 scheduled break out sessions by 9 instructors. I went to 2 on contract crocheting and pattern editing, 1 by Marjorie Scensny & I by Kathleen Power Johnson, the 3rd session I went to was writing and sending design proposals, by Melissa Leapman. There was a 2 hour break, then a 2 hour talk by Tammy, much more detailed and a question and answer time.
Thursday, class day. I have two 3-hour sessions with Kathleen Power Johnson. In the morning is Basic designing in Tunisian crochet, the evening is 3 hours on Advanced designing in Tunisian. Kathleen really knows Tunisian, I had a class with her last March, also. If you get a chance to take one of her classes, you'll be amazed at how much you can learn in only 3 hours.
Thursday evening was the Keynote Speaker - Carol Alexander of "Talking Crochet" . If you don't get this free, regular email about crochet, click the link and subscribe, there's always something interesting. After Carol Alexander's talk there was a gift exchange. I had brought a gift, but forgot (or maybe didn't every know, there was a lot of stuff to do to get ready for the conference) that the gift was to be gift wrapped. Anyway, those who brought a gift put it on a table in the front, and then each took a gift from the table, opened the gift and displayed it for everyone. There were so many creative, attractive projects. Possibly my favorite was the potholder set that looked like a hamburger - 2 light brown "bun" potholders, a dark brown "burger", red "tomato", yellow "cheese" and green "lettuce". Fun! There were pretty doilies, purses, belts, etc.

A little bag I whipped up for my new digital camera.