Nicky's blog

I was invited to teach at one of my favorite venues, The Big Apple Knitting Guild, out at LaGuardia College in Queens, NY. More than 50 dedicated knitters showed up, and we had a lot of fun and shared a lot of knitting ideas. It was wonderful to see all their familiar smiling faces and get lots of hugs.

I just flew back from Columbus, Ohio…and boy, are my arms tired! (ba-rum-bum-bum). But seriously folks…I had a wonderful time at the big TNNA (The National Needlecraft Association) Show. For those of you who don’t know, TNNA shows are bi-annual gatherings where yarn manufacturers, yarn shop owners, needlecraft magazine and book publishers, accessory manufacturers, and designers and authors (like moi) get together to share ideas, see what’s new, sell each other “stuff” and eat, drink and be merry.

A lovely surprise for my birthday: Our son Scott “secretly” planted over 200 daffodils and tulips at our log home in Pennsylvania, last October, timing it so that they would beautifully bloom in time for my May birthday. It was amazing, and the deer will probably have a fine meal on the tulips. A friend in Seattle also sent me several dozen tulips from a tulip farm near her, so I had a beautiful, flowery birthday.

2007 was a whirlwind year for me…Three new best-selling books (thanks to you), knitting tours in Tuscany, Australia, New Zealand and London, a number of new designs published in knitting magazines (including my flowered scarf on the cover of Vogue Knitting magazine’s 25th anniversary issue) and the joyous opportunity of meeting and teaching so many of you here and around the world. I’m exhausted but excited about 2008. I’m pleased to announce the launch of my own imprint, Nicky Epstein Books.