Columbus Yarn Lover Invasion

We had so much fun during our 9-day stay in Ohio! Thanks to all the fantastic suggestions you all left in the comments of our last blog post, we ate (and ate, and ate) really well. Jeni's Ice Cream cooled us down nearly every day - it really is as splendid as they say (so, so many flavors). Since we went there nearly every day during our visit, we found out that the day after the Yarn Harlot's post, Jeni's was hit with 80 more orders than usual, and Jeni herself said in a staff meeting that she thought the orders could be traced to "the knitters." Yarn lovers have good taste, indeed.

TNNA: June 6 - 9

The TNNA summer show is huge. Aisle after aisle of beautiful yarns, tools, and books, and people eager to show off everything that is available now or coming out this fall. Right away, during registration, we saw Norah Gaughan wearing a beta "I Swatched Ravelry" t-shirt. That set the tone for the show for us; as we walked around, we felt like we were among friends.Casey even got a surprise! The very nice people at Malabrigo had a local crafter in Uruguay make Small Bob just for him. Small Bob went all over Columbus with us, and he is loved by all. (Thanks so, so much!)

Throughout the show, we met so many users with small businesses: LYS owners, designers, and yarnies, who spoke with us and shared their favorite ways to use Ravelry to connect with people, and even help not only their personal crochet and knitting work, but also their companies and customers. It was great to get such terrific feedback... of course we are now swimming with (even more) ideas for the site.

Knitter's Connection: June 11 - 14

Between the two events, we spent most of our time in the hotel's business center, working on our presentation for Knitter's Connection. The Yarn Whisperer, Clara Parkes, spoke on Wednesday night - she could make anyone want to go home and swatch something just... because! Thursday we spent the day finalizing our slides. This was our first Ravelry presentation - exciting and more than a little nerve-wracking. Lucky for us, when we stepped onstage (after a lovely introduction by Cat Bordhi), we looked out at the smiling faces and felt much more at ease. Small Bob was onstage with us, which helped, and Jess brought some yarn onstage to squish, too.

There was so much to share - how Jess and Casey got the idea and developed the site, how it has grown, a Ravelry tour (with some fun tips), and quite a few slides about our fantastic community of users: editors, helpers, moderators, trackers, Ravelraisers, friendly people - all of you! (Ravelry user Osamma took the presentation pictures shown here - thanks, Sam!) Even though the evening was stormy, windy, and streets were closed around town, so many people came out to support us - it was wonderful. Ravelry: Unraveled was supposed to last an hour, but we talked for about an hour and a half. (Oops!) Good thing we put in lots of slides for Bob Breaks...

There are lots more pictures in Jess' and Mary-Heather's Flickr sets, and we've added lots of them to the Ravelry Events Flickr Pool - go ahead and check them out (and add your own pictures to the pool)!