BlogHer and Stuff

I’m going to talk about the “and stuff” first off so hopefully more people will read it, then I’ll post about Blogher.

Okay so first off, in my haste to get the pattern up on Saturday I made a typo and messed up the pdf link. It’s fixed so go have some felting fun.

I also made the banner a link so you can now click on it to send you back to the homepage. There was a typo for like 5mins, but that is fixed now too. I’m going to blame it on my keyboard being dirty and leaving out some of the letters I’m typing… yeah…. sure that’s what it is…. ;)

Last thing, I’m extending the b-day contest (info in the side bar) to Sunday, August 12th, 2007! And it can be any kind of project made from any leftover fabric, no size limitation! So send me some pictures and win cool stuff!

Should I have done all caps too? I’m yelling and pointing my finger just so you know. Hehe, not really, I just need some more submissions to make this fair….. and so I don’t look lame…. don’t make me look lame, send me some pictures of your fabric projects.

Okay, Blogher.

Chicago, wow, so much fun. The conference was so great. I finally met people that I had been admiring from afar for so long. Jennifer from Craft Sanity, Natalie from CRAFTzine, Leah from so many things, Kathy the Crafty Chica, Amy Sedaris from well… Amy Sedaris, Chloe Dao from Project Runway season 2…. And I discovered and enjoyed so many bloggers for the first time that were just absolutely amazing! I collected as many business cards as I could, but if I didn’t get to meet you, leave a comment with your url and I’ll check it out.

The conference was great. Check out all these freaking people. There were 800 of us! The largest blog conference period, regardless of gender. That’s pretty cool if you ask me.

The cocktail parties were pretty fun too, fancy little finger foods and wine that was decent. I’m happy. And check out the views:

We actually did get to hang out with Amy a bit. We were all starving so we went out to dinner after the panel. Oh and the panel! It was so fun.

Everyone on the panel was super excited and positive. And Leah was such a great moderator. She defused some possibly volatile situations without skipping a beat. The audience asked so many really deep questions no one went on and on and had to be cut off. There was such positive dialogue. It was so amazing to me to have people pulling me (and everyone else on the panel) aside the rest of the night. Many had stories to share about their crafting, their business, and etc. But a lot of people told me how they didn’t craft, didn’t care about crafting, just came to see Amy, didn’t care about the rest of us on the panel…. but that seeing our excitement and passion about crafting and the crafting community made them excited. One woman even said something like “you guys make me want to learn to knit!” How fabulous is that! It’s like we crossed the blogging void between crafting and other blogging types and related to everyone! Now that is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!

You can listen to it here.
You can see pictures of the whole day courtesy of Natalie Zee Drieu on flickr.

Here is Amy signing books:


And here we all are:

And I got to meet this fab lady, Trish, for the first time:

isn’t her dress cute:

Oh and the dress I made from a vintage bed sheet was a hit. I had several people ask to get pictures to put up on their fashion blogs! Me… fashion…. what? I’m so glad I spent that time sewing until the wee hours of the morning to finish it up… and except for maybe Chloe no one noticed the mess-ups. Or at least didn’t point them out…. and even Chloe didn’t… because she is just so freaking nice.

I learned so many things from the women there! I’m so excited I can’t wait to get going on some of the things swirling around in my head!

The cocktail party at the Children’s museum was so neat. Chloe Dao was there doing demos on how to alter a tee shirt so it’s swanky fashionable with no sewing.

Afterwards Natalie, Leah, and I were able to go out for drinks with her, she is so nice. So excited about what she is doing, so smart about her designs for woman. I want to make her clothes. These three women’s passion about fashion made me excited about it and I may just have to start checking it out more. I’m definitely adding Natalie’s other blog Coquette to my rss feed.

Sunday we went down to Millennium Park and saw the “bean” and the pavilion.

I headed back a little early, I took the 2:40 train instead of the 6ish train. It will be good to be home for dinner…. and rest my feet… Oh yes… I had so many blisters. I messed it up the first day by putting inserts in my keds. It raised up my foot just enough to make everything rub wrong. It was bad the rest of the time. It was worth it though. I’m beat, need a shower, my feet hurt, but I’m so excited, happy, and positive about the crafting community both on and off line!

Goodbye for now BlogHer! It was nice to meet you all!