VK LIVE Pasadena Recap

I just returned from a really fun weekend at Vogue Knitting LIVE in sunny Pasadena!

Right here is where I would insert a photo of palm trees, but I have a habit of missing important “locale” photos, and instead this is the only photo I took outside of the marketplace all weekend.

I passed this place every morning on my run, and I liked the local flavor of it amongst all the upscale chain stores. Pasadena has an interesting mix of the old and the new like that.

The last time I was in the area was for VK LIVE in LA four years ago. So this was a welcome opportunity to return, and it was great to see some familiar faces from last time, plus plenty of new people.

Thursday and Friday morning were a blur of stitching and pinning Mochimochi Land together. Seven hours of work on this might seem like a lot, but spreading it out over two days helps a lot, and I don’t get much happier than when I’m listening to some music on my phone and making little dramas take shape.

And to me it’s worth it to add all the fun little details for people to discover.

I set up most of Mochimochi Land in a similar way as I did in NYC earlier this year, but I like to change it up a bit every time, so this time we had colorful sheep, alpaca, and disco gnomes!

See more from the weekend after the jump!

The marketplace opened on Friday, and the rest of the weekend was a happy blur of meeting cool knitters and crocheters, selling stuff, and getting to see all the various expressions as people took in the finished Mochimochi Land.

Plus, several people came by to contribute gnomes to Project Gnome Diplomacy!

And some other cousin mochis came to live in Mochimochi Land!

How cute is this merbunny!? It was made by 13-year-old Sofia!

And on Sunday we had a hunt for tiny roses! I love these hunts—people really get into them. We had nine successful rose locaters who each won a copy of Huge & Huggable Mochimochi.

Once again, one little rose got away undiscovered—strange, right? Well, I can’t really blame it for wanting to stay in Pasadena. (By the way, the tiny rose is available as a free pattern!)

But I haven’t mentioned the best part of the weekend yet. For the first time, my mom joined me for VK Live!

She’s not a knitter, so this was all very new to her. But she was an enormous help throughout, and it was so much fun to hang out with her all weekend. Thanks, Mom!

Also joining me in the art gallery were some amazing artists who work in knitting and crochet. I’d like to do a separate blog post on them if I can squeeze it into my schedule, but highlights were Ben Cuevas (of the knitted skeleton; he also gave a really interesting talk about 3-D knitting) and Pat Ahern (who uses uses yarn like paint in his amazing crocheted pieces). Another highlight was seeing the awesome gals of the Yarnover Truck!

Big thanks to the people at Vogue Knitting LIVE and to everyone who came out over the weekend. I hope to return to the west coast before too long!