I’m bumping up against the too-long-away-from-home mark. Can I have a collective sigh? I’ve done it to myself; I’m not complaining. Just a status update. So, here we go:

• I gave my presentation at the Folio Show this morning. I had no idea what people would be seeking from the session, so I edited my slides pretty much until I loaded them onto the computer at the podium. In the end, I forced myself to remember I’m far better at speaking extemporaneously than I am at preparing notes, so I took a deep breath and winged it. And although I’m not sure my actual presentation covered things deeply enough, the question/answer period was great. I certainly prefer interacting with an audience over speaking at one. If it didn’t require traveling, I’d look to do more speaking gigs.
• A few people have come up to me to tell me they enjoyed the session. Each made me smile.
• This speaking gig was so totally different from the one at Threadbear on Saturday. Allow me to list the ways:
  • Costume at Threadbear: Black dress, grey cami, purple tights, boots.
  • Costume at Folio: Pink button-down, black vest, black skirt, black tights, boots.
  • Setup at Threadbear: Lots of crochet that I held up and waved around and handed out.
  • Setup at Folio: Darkened room, projector, microphone, remote control, PowerPoint (I loathe ppt with a simmering, dull ache that doesn’t produce rage but does numb the mind).
  • At Threadbear: Mostly women, puppies.
  • At Folio: Lots of men and women, no puppies.
  • Chats at Threadbear: About yarn and crochet and knitting and projects and fit and creativity.
  • Chats at Folio: For the most part, web people came to chat with me, so there was less talk of formal business than I’d feared. I have managed not to encounter the words leverage or monetize and so am quite relieved.
• A thought about how I just seemed to contrast web people with formal business people: To oversimplify (or maybe not), it’s like there are three types of people working on the web in publishing: Web folk, print folk, and business folk. Web folk move fast, think fast, are risk takers and community builders, are enriched by their online experience and value said richness, and are comfortable with experimentation. Print folk are apprehensive about the fast pace of the web, they’re wary of the things users might say about their brand or their advertisers, to varying extents they don’t understand what consumers value in web-based content, and some feel threatened by the web (for one or both of two reasons: they fear people will stop buying print and/or they aren’t interested in producing content for the web and so feel a bit personally threatened). Business people speak in tongues I rarely understand; think of the web in terms of visitors, click-throughs, sell-through-rates, and conversions; and baffle me by their keen ability to make lots of money while seeming never to fully get what-all the web is about.
• The event at Threadbear. I’ll sum up in sentence fragments. Forty people. Awesome chats. Sandi rocks. Matt and Rob: incredible hosts and good friends. Puppies: so cute. Yummy eats. Magic.
  
• Knitting Daily TV taping was awesome. By the end of the week, it was like summer camp. In a good way. It’s what happens when people pass a threshold of lots of concentrated time together in a small space. There was a lot of laughing. And some really good television made.
  
• I posted a ton of photos and some audio clips from the taping on Tumblr. I still have one more audio clip to edit and post.
• What do you think of the audio? I’d never produced audio before, and I’m really enjoying it. Should I keep it going, in some better-planned, more creative ways? Lemme know.
• I’m going to hunker down with the Tumblr API and try to figure out how to automatically pull a daily roundup of my posts over there into this blog. I love using Tumblr, but really want to integrate the content over here. For (shh, don’t tell anyone) I love this blog more.
• I’ve barely read fiction during this trip. I’m not even halfway through Watchmen. I think it’s partly that, although I love the story, I haven’t gotten sucked into it yet, and partly that I had a hell of a time kicking jet lag and ended up staring at the television way more than usual.
• Speaking of. WTF is up with Heroes? Gossip Girl was way more entertaining than their weird pre-launch televised party. And then the plot suddenly seemed so… contrived. Is this what television is now, post-writers-strike? So obviously formulaic?
• One formula I’ll stick with, though: Fringe. Why? Because I find Joshua Jackson, like, totally dreamy.
• I went to visit Lorna’s Laces yesterday. I loved seeing how they work. Beth walked me through their dyeing process, and she just so happened to be making Amy Singer‘s colour. Special.
  
• I rode the elevated train here in Chicago to get to Lorna’s and I only thought it would fall off the track twice. It’s cool to ride, but I prefer a proper buried subway.

A couple more pics for you, and then I’m heading to O’Hare to finally go home. Later, ‘gators.

Float Away Scarves we showed on the show:

Sandi and Bertha:

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As promised, I’ve been Twittering and tumbling from the studio today, posting photos and wee audio clips (ok, just one clip so far) from our first day taping the second season of Knitting Daily TV. You can subscribe to the feed over at my Tumblr site for automatic updates. Here are some highlights from today so far:

• Float Away Scarves have arrived
• Wee audioblog intro to the week
• I totally flubbed the very first line uttered during this taping. Go me.
• First shot of the tele in the green room
• KDTV finally has a Facebook page. Fan us, won’t you? And drop us a line!

I looked but couldn’t find a WordPress plugin that automatically pulls a day’s Tumblr posts into a list. Hmph.

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Bright & Early: Makeup, originally uploaded by kpwerker.

It’s amazing how quickly we adapt to new situations. Leading up to this week’s taping, the most dominant thoughts I had were about my very personal view of the odd nature of how-to television and about my own lack of narcissistic desire for widespread visual exposure. I was (um, narcissistically) concerned about my wardrobe, my haircut, my ability to sound coherent and to guide an informative segment, and how impossible it seemed that I wouldn’t look like a buffoon.

After only five days of taping, my perspective has changed entirely, though some of my original thoughts persist. I now feel very, very comfortable being in front of cameras. I even feel comfortable staring one down. I feel confident facilitating an instructional segment, though I still have a lot to learn. I feel I’ve at least reached that point in a new experience where I’ve gotten over the shock of overwhelm and can now start to focus on certain skills. I’m still concerned I looked like an idiot.

I’ve had a producer speak through my earpiece (I joked I felt like a Cylon; nobody laughed) while the cameras were rolling and I’m pretty sure I didn’t (often) flinch. I’ve read from a teleprompter. I managed not to use foul language, though I might have engaged in one or two over-the-top conversations while my mic was live. I got a feel for which camera to close to, and I kept my fingernails looking pretty good for five straight days.

I met many talented artists and I hope I did well by them on air.

And now I’m heading to my parents’ house for a couple of days, and then back home for a return to my (usual) norm of behind-the-scenes magazine work. I might just miss the showtime. For a few days.

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Greetings from Ohio, where we’re in our second day of taping Knitting Daily TV. We’re pretty swamped, but I figured I’d let some photos from yesterday do the talking. If I were posting photos from today, I imagine this might be considered live blogging. But these photos are from yesterday, so.

I had a blast with Wendy. Check out all these Tomatoes made by knitters from all over (Wendy designed the original).

Robyn was, as always, infectiously cheery. We had fun, too, of course. We talked about symbol crochet; the orange sweater is from her new book that will come out this fall. It rocks.

It was awesome to finally meet Monika and Erika Simmons, Chicago designers otherwise known as Double Stitch. Monika brought her 2-month-old, who was edibly adorable.

Here’s a wider pic of the set, with Robyn setting up for one of her segments and executive producer Kathie helping out.

More in the next couple of days. Now I’m going to try to get some magazine work done in the green room (which is, surprisingly, actually green).

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Every year since we moved to Vancouver, I’ve managed to leave town in the height of spring transition. Just as the cherry and crab-apple blossoms come into full bloom, I hitch a plane out of town. This year is no different, and today is my day to dive into the mad frenzy of preparing to leave town for a week of all sorts of new adventures.

Yesterday I had my final manicure, bought a new top-coat (thanks for the tip, Carol!) and pale polish, picked up some super-duper face-cleansing cloths, and did several loads of laundry. Today I’m spending the morning setting up email autoresponders, replying to as many emails as I can (and I started off behind), crossing things off my huge to-do list, printing out flight itineraries, hotel information and taping schedules, and all with an undertone of mild freak-out. I’m taking the afternoon off, both because I need the time to prepare and pack, and also because I’m getting my hair cut and dyed. Since I don’t have much hair anymore, this shouldn’t be as big a deal as it’s been in the past. But still, you know, it’s my hair.

I washed my Icelandic Turtleneck, which had been sitting in a bag since my trip to Minnesota for the Knit Out six weeks ago. It’s, unfortunately, what I was wearing during the great food-poisoning fiasco. I tried to forget it even exists, but my desire to bring it with me to Ohio won out. Now it’s clean and dry, but I think it’s too radioactive in colour to look good on camera. We’ll see.

I’m excited and nervous about the taping, but I have a feeling the nerves will go away once I get there and see the set and do a couple of segments. I mean, I have to get over it. The nerves were fine when I was a guest on a segment or two in the past, but this time around I’m doing a lot of segments, and as a host. It’ll be my job to keep the guest at ease. I’m looking forward to the challenge, and I hope I do right by them all.

In addition to the crazy amount of clothes I need to bring, plus the super-duper make-up removal cloths and hand lotion and cuticle oil and nail polish, I’m packing for myself as I would if I were to be travelling with a ten-year-old me. Lots of activities! They’ll keep me sane. Ipod, novel, a couple of magazines, perhaps a second novel, my still in-progress Model Citizen Scarf, possibly my Gathered Pullover sleeve (any tips on traveling with a project on three dpns that don’t lay flat?), and some random yarn for a one-skein project or two.

Speaking of novels. I’m reading some sci-fi now, but I just finished a book you must read. This book should be required reading for every human being on this planet, for no book has made me feel more human or inspired in me more of a need to be a better human, and as I read it as part of my book club I can say that that experience of the book was not unique to me. Drop whatever you’re reading now and pick up What is the What, by Dave Eggers (the outstanding telling of the autobiography of Sudanese “Lost Boy” Valentino Achak Deng).

Enough procrastinating. I must get back to my frenzy. I’ll leave you with a pic of my first full-colour handspun. It’s about 34 yards, which I know because I now have a wee niddy-noddy. I will certainly be spinning more in the weeks to come.

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In less than two weeks we’ll begin taping for Knitting Daily TV, and I’m definitely feeling in the homestretch. I’ve been dreaming of outfits. And I’m really excited to see so many talented fiber people.

And I’ve been thinking about hands. My hands are a part of my body I’ve always really liked. You know those women who are always fit and thin no matter what they eat and even though they rarely exercise? Yeah, my hands are like that. (Only my hands, of course.) My nails are strong and everything. And this is despite not moisturizing regularly, only occasionally pushing back my cuticles, and being a fairly accomplished clutz.

So my figuring about a full week of television taping that will involve a fair bit of hand close-ups is that I’ll remember to moisturize and will paint my nails with clear polish. Of course, it’s being encouraged by our producers that we have a French manicure. They’re so undeniably lovely, you see. I’m doubtful I could manage to have a French manicure persist undamaged for six whole days, but I’m not comfortable letting doubt guide me.

Enter The Great Manicure Test. I got one on Monday in the late afternoon. Here’s how it looked yesterday morning (parfait):

And this morning (parfait still):

Will the manicure persist unchipped? Will I alter my behaviour to keep my fingers safe from hard labour? Stay tuned, gentle readers…

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Camera Ready, originally uploaded by kpwerker.

Ooh, I loved the makeup artist on set! She was fun, she worked magic, and she tamed my hair, too. Wicked.

I was so jet-lagged I didn’t feel nervous on camera. Granted, I can’t guarantee I was coherent, either. Overall, good times.

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