Mechanical Engineering and Fairies - Really! - April 2010

April has been a truly inspiring month. I taught at the Northern California Weavers Conference - great fun - and continued on to the Westminster Fibers sales conference in Nashua, New Hampshire, where we were immersed in the new collections for Fall Winter 2010 - a yarn-o-holic's dream. Then down to Boston where I visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology museum with my son Peter, an engineering student at Tufts, along with our good friends Becky and Susan. The museum is a celebration of creativity and original thinking, through the lens of science and technology. My favorite exhibit was Gestural Engineering, mechanical sculptures by Arthur Ganson, an MIT artist-in-residence who describes himself as a "cross between a mechanical engineer and a choreographer." http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/ganson.html

Later that day, Becky, who works at Candlewick Press, shared a gorgeous new book they just published called Fairie-ality Style - A Sourcebook of Inspirations from Nature. Now I am not a fairie follower, but the photos in this book are sensational, and simply leafing through such a beautiful book really IS inspirational. I'm adding this one to my design library. http://www.fairie-ality.com/fairie2/info.asp

But wait, there's more! The next day, through the efforts of my friend Jessica Oas, a fabulous knitter and the Westminster Fibers New England representative, I was invited to teach ColorPlay:Nature's Palettes to a group of knitters at Seed Stitch Fine Yarn in Salem, MA. The owner of Seed Stitch, Courtney Heath, wrote about it on her blog and even included a small video clip. http://ayarntale.com/2010/about-ssfy/color-play/

Now I'm home, putting together the season's hand knitting offerings, about to hit the road - full of color and design inspiration, and so happy to be immersed in a life of fabulous fibers!