Conference/Festival Recaps, Teaching

DFW FF 2019 Recap

Hi all!
Well, I should have known that I wouldn’t post during the Fiber Festival – but I always have high hopes that I’ll get a minute or two to post from the road. Oh well. But I’ll post a recap now…

I flew into Dallas Fort Worth on Wednesday (4/3) – and had a pretty uneventful flight (little bit of turbulence but nothing major.) Well, unless you count the fact that my checked bag was actually overweight and I had to pay extra — oops. Got to DFW in the afternoon, and rode the DART light rail from the airport to the Conference center stop. Then hoofed it from the station to the hotel — with NO sidewalks for me to walk on… on a major road. That was fun (NOT) carting my overweight bag plus my purse and carry on.  (A construction worker along the way actually offered to help me get to the hotel. But I’m an independent woman and I politely declined. I was a sweaty mess by the time I got to the hotel lobby, but darn it, I got there on my own.) Made it to the hotel and checked in fine. What a lovely hotel!! It had just opened for business the Saturday before, so the staff was still learning the lay of the land – which made some things interesting.

I met the TKGA instructors that had come in from all over for dinner at one of the restaurants within walking (at the Toyota Music Factory area) and it was lovely to see them all again! (I wish we had gotten a group photo!)

(Oh, and I dressed in 1940/50s attire all weekend – check out my Instagram feed for all of my outfits.) 🙂

TKGA Master’s Day was all day Thursday, and it was sold out. It went very well (or it seemed like it from my end) and hopefully students got some good value out of the day. I love teaching at Master’s Day, because it’s so nice having such dedicated students all together in one place. Master’s hopeful knitters are a really special group. Then Thursday night we had a TKGA staff dinner at another area restaurant (Gloria’s) – the food in the area is just wonderful.

Friday I taught all day. In the morning was my ‘Tisket Tasket Entrelac Baskets’ class (15 students) and it was a great group of students. In the afternoon was my ‘A Sampling of Short Rows’ class (sold out with 20 students) and it was another great group of students! I had a long day and was desperately fighting off a migraine that had been trying to take hold since the night before. Thankfully, I was able to keep it at bay during my classes, but every time I got a break it tried to come back. So instead of participating in the speaker event that night, a few of the TKGA folks and I had a quiet dinner in the hotel — it was the best choice for my poor head. I got a few minutes at lunch to shop in the vendor hall, too.

Tisket Tasket Entrelac Baskets
A Sampling of Short Rows
Dinner Friday night

Saturday I was at the TKGA booth pretty much all day, and I got a chance to really do some shopping. I fell down hard at the Graces Cases booth. lol. And I got some yarn (3 skeins of self striping sock yarn) among some other doo-dads.  I had some stress this day because when I tried to check into my flight for the following day, my itinerary showed as cancelled! I had to call the airlines, who actually thought I had missed my flight on Wednesday. Kind of hard to be in Dallas if I had missed my flight? They got me back on my original flight home, though, so it worked out. Then we had an even quieter dinner at the hotel, since by now we were down to me and two of the TKGA instructors (everyone else had left town on Saturday.)

Celia and I at the TKGA booth
My haul from the Vendor Hall

Sunday was an early morning, catching a taxi at 6:15 to get to the airport in time for my flight home. I made it home uneventfully (except for catching the wrong shuttle to my parked car, oops!)

It was a whirlwind long weekend, but a fantastic one! DFW Fiber Fest is really a great show- well run, with lovely vendors – if you ever get a chance to go you definitely should!

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