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TNNA Conference Yarn Report

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Knitter’s Review visited the TNNA early June in Columbus Ohio. ” TNNA stands for The National NeedleArts Association, and twice a year they host a conference where store owners, manufacturers, designers, publishers, and industry folk come together to learn, schmooze, and sell. Besides the marketplace, [tag]TNNA[/tag] also offers a fantastic array of classes, as well as various other programs and a fashion show.”

Knitters Review reports on several new yarns soon to be available.

Pam Allen now works at [tag]Classic Elite Yarns[/tag]. Pam helped to develop the Alpaca Sox yarn which is composed of 60% alpaca, 20% merino, and 20% nylon.

[tag]Knit One, Crochet Too[/tag] previewed its new sock yarn, Soxx Appeal. A truly springy and subtly textured sock yarn, Soxx Appeal is made of 96% Merino, 3% nylon, and 1% elastic, and comes in a host of variegated colors.

Among the numerous new hand-dyers at the show, the level of quality and innovation varied dramatically. The new yarn darling had to be [tag]ShibuiKnits[/tag], based in Portland, Oregon. They had seven yarns on display, each developed with specific intention and taking into consideration how its weight, fiber content and quality, twist, and ply would work in conjunction with the other yarns.

Vermont-based organic yarn vendor [tag]Vermont Organic Fiber Company[/tag] had two new yarns on display. Although this company is relatively new to the handknitting yarn market, they’ve been selling organic wool to the textile trade since 2000 and are making impressive inroads.

Visit [tag]Knitter’s Review[/tag] for the whole story!

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Comments

  1. Did you go to the TNNA event? If you saw the fashion show one of my shawls was featured. You can see it on my blog (turquoise fleece shawl) which is my own technique using a felted fleece and freeform crochet and knitting embellishments. Check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks.

Have you read?

Tips for Picking the Right Color Yarn for Your Project

I have never been all that picky about the colors I use in knitting projects. When choosing colors for projects to go in my books, I try to pick colors that go together in individual projects and also to use a variety of colors among the projects in the book, so while I love blue and green I make sure to throw in orange and yellow as well, for example.

When knitting projects for myself I’m usually using stash so whatever I have is good enough. Or if I do happen to be buying yarn for a project, it’s usually more about the texture or fiber content of the yarn first, then choosing a color I like, rather than having a color in mind then finding a yarn with that in its line.

Marie at Olive Knits was looking for the perfect green yarn to replace a store bought sweater, and she found that picking out exactly the right shade was trickier than she expected.

She wrote a blog post full of tips for finding the right yarn when you’re looking for a particular color.

I think the hardest part of this these days is that we tend to do so much online shopping for yarn, either because we don’t have a local yarn store, we can’t get what we want locally or we want to support independent makers who live elsewhere. And if you’ve ever received yarn that isn’t quite the color you were expecting you know what I’m talking about.

One of her tips, then, is to look at a color swatch for the yarn you’re thinking about buying on every monitor or device you have available because it probably will look different on different screens (and maybe different still in person, and under different lighting conditions, or if you use it in a project with other colors…).

Check out her post for more tips on finding the right color for your project.

[Photo: Olive Knits.]

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