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Take 5: Top 5 Fiber Events with Nutmeg Knitter

Welcome back to another episode of the Take 5 blog series! This week, we are joined by one of my colleagues and virtual knitting friends, Rebecca Huben of NutmegKnitter.com! Rebecca is a prolific knitter (and crocheter and spinnner) who wears many hats: in addition to working with me at Stitchcraft Marketing, Rebecca is a full-time Mom, a test knitter/sample knitter, and she blogs even more than I do! Click here to get caught up past Take 5 blog posts; I hope you enjoy today's post which is full of great ways to make fiber friends and engage in our wonderful community! 

Hi there, I’m Becca! I blog from Connecticut, the Nutmeg state, which is how I picked my blog / Ravelry / all over social media name: Nutmegknitter. Here are my top 5 events or classes:
  1. Your Local Yarn Festival! For me, this means the bigger New York Sheep and Wool Festival (aka Rhinebeck) and the smaller CT Sheep and Wool Festival. A yarn festival has a feel similar to a country fair – there are food vendors and animals, and YARN. This is a great opportunity to wear a shawl or sweater or something you have made to show it off, the other festival-goers are truly interested! Simply walking around and seeing what others are wearing or have made is a great way to rejuvenate your creative mojo. Plus, it can be proof to your family that there are other people out there just as into yarn as you are – or even more so! My knitting group likes to make unique hats each year so we can find each other in the crowd.
  2. Yarn Crawls! A yarn crawl is an event where you go from shop to yarn shop, easy enough. Sometimes the shops coordinate for deals and specials for a particular weekend. Here in New England I’ve participated in the I-91 Shop Hop and the North Shore Yarn Crawl just outside of Boston. I have also gotten together with friends and we do our own yarn crawl, just checking out a series of shops in one afternoon.
  3. Rebecca recommends sporting this sweatshirt at your next fibery event!
  4. Photography Class! You can’t wear all the items you make all the time, so you should document them! If you are going to blog, update your Ravelry notebook, or just share it to Facebook, it is worth the time and effort to take a decent picture of the object in which you put your time and effort. I highly recommend Gale Zucker’s Photography for Knitters or Crafters workshop. If you can’t make it to a workshop, there is also a great Craftsy class with Caro Sheridan called Shoot It! that will also help you take better photos to showcase your work.
  5. Knitting Retreats! A weekend away surrounded by knitters is a very nice way to spend your time and I wish I could attend more of them. Similar to a yarn festival, there is a lot of inspiration and creativity, but in a much more intimate setting. The atmosphere is low key and social. I attended the Knitter’s Review Retreat in 2010 and was able to take a workshop with Ann Budd, was told a bedtime story by Cat Bordhi, and attended “yarn church” with Clara Parkes.
  6. Your Local SnB / Knit-Night! If it’s once a month, or once a week, at a shop or at a restaurant, meeting up with other knitters and crocheters is an easy way to share your love of all things yarn. In my knitting group we cheer each other on, help with mistakes or advise on button choices, make fun of silly things in the knitting magazines (Why is that model holding a stick?!), and have informal swaps when someone clears out their stash!

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