I Miss Needlework Shows & Cons…

I miss needlework shows. I miss CATS (and having it local so I didn’t have to fork out the cash for a hotel room). I haven’t been able to afford EGA Seminars. I miss them.

I was reading Havi Brooks blog archives the other day (it’s taking me a LONG time to get through them because there’s so much wonderful information that I have to stop and digest as I work through it…) And she said this about what happens at conferences:

Connections. Friendships. Torrid love affairs of the mind. This is sometimes also called “networking”.

~Havi Brooks (& Selma)

Yup. That’s it exactly. I MISS sitting around the table talking to Eileen Bennett about the 5 different ways we know to do a chain stitch and what’s the easiest to use when… I miss being able to go book shopping with Linn Skinner (of course part of that is the fact that we no longer live in the same town, but still…).

I met one of my best face to face friends on usenet – rec.crafts.textiles.needlework way back when and when I moved to NC, there she was. 🙂 But for me, working on a computer 8 hours a day means I don’t necessarily want to see one when I get home, so the online community suffers a bit for me. I have what appears to be odd taste in needlework (I like a little bit of everything, from crewel to cross stitch, to stumpwork and everything in between), so I miss the big needlework shows and conferences.

All of which adds up to: I need to start attending art workshops and the few needlework shows that are still out there… we need to support them or they’re going to disappear in this economy. And dance workshops. And any workshop or conference that is part of something you are passionate about. There’s just SOMETHING cool about being in a room full of people who “get it” and don’t look at you like you’re insane when you start babbling about how mad youare that they discontinued DMC Medici wool — or that you just HAVE to have another jingly hipscarf, even though you’ve got thirty hanging in your closet… You may start out alone, but by the end of the first hour you’ve got more people to hang out with than you’d think. (Oh, and the “celebrities”? They’re just people who love what you love, too…

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Leave a reply