It’s a Wrap…ANWG 2025 – Blog Post
Traveling to shows is one of our favorite things to do! Mingling with customers, showing off our products and samples, and attending conference events reenergizes our souls and sends us home with our creative juices flowing. This summer, 3 of the Lunatics and a whole trailer full of yarn and weaving equipment traveled to Yakima, Washington to the ANWG conference. We were inspired daily and had a great time!
Camaraderie
Inspiration and camaraderie are a huge part of every show. We come with yarn and equipment, and we leave inspired. As vendors, we are typically in the booth all day so customers can come and shop when they would like. It is a real treat for us when you come to the booth to touch and feel the samples we have created. We love connecting your face to your name that we have interacted with online or over the phone. We hear your comments about the samples, we get feedback on what you like, and we hear what you are working on which gives us ideas too. And we get to see the glow in your eyes as you plan your next projects. Those parts make traveling to conferences so much fun!
What Did We Bring?
It wouldn't be our booth without a display of Color Gamps, and this year it acted like a beacon to welcome you into the booth. We love getting questions about Color Gamps, how they can be used and using them to pick colors for our customer’s projects. We also enjoyed participating in the Shop till We All Drop event. This year we gave out raffle tickets to win the Shadow Play Northern Lights kit. A good time was had by all!
And the Guild Booths!
Guild booths are always a highlight of the conference! It is amazing to see the work each guild puts in to create a booth to draw the viewers into the world of the guild. This year Jenne’s favorite booth was from the Portland Handweavers Guild. She grew up in the Pacific Northwest and loved traveling to Powell’s Bookstore. She has also heard many stories about Darcelle’s, so seeing a Tapestry piece woven of Darcelle was heartwarming. Thank goodness for our guilds to teach and inspire!
Nighttime is for Sharing!
We were lucky enough with the ANWG scheduling to be able to attend many of the evening events. The fashion show was filled with many beautifully designed garments, and it was fun to see them on the runway. Although Katzy Luhring and Cynthia Newman didn’t enter their published Blue Horizon Tunic into the show, it was a real treat seeing them wearing their garments to the fashion show.
And as always, Robyn Spady knocked it out of the park with her keynote speech. The crowd spent the evening laughing and relating to the stories she told.
The End.
It is always bittersweet when the conference comes to an end. We spend our time packing up the booth, reminiscing over the amazing days we encountered, and talking about what we are excited to weave when we get home. It is comforting knowing that there will be more conferences in the upcoming years!
And a special thank you goes out to the organizers of the conferences around the country! Without you and your hard work, we wouldn't be able to attend, share and be inspired! Thank you!
We can’t wait to see what inspiration is waiting for us all!
Thank you for the post on the ANWG 2025 Conference. It was total fun to check out your booth, look at all the yarn/tools, plus share my delight with the American Maid cotton and the hemp yarns that I’ve been using to weave bath towels/sheets. They are wearing like iron. I love how the natural green yarn darkens with a baking soda soak. Thank you for offering the awesome yarn!! Looking forward to seeing Lunatic Fringe at another event. Are you doing a virtual pop-up at the HGA Spinning and Weaving Week conference in October 4-10? The virtual tours of the shops is a hoot (and inspirational). Thank you, again, for being a vendor at the ANWG conference!!