Fun with Yarn at Maker Faire Bay Area 2010

June 1st, 2010 by Zontee

We love to reach out to yarncrafters (and those who want to learn a yarncraft) here at Lion Brand, which is why we go to a bunch of different craft and yarn fairs throughout the year. So far in 2010, we’ve been to Stitches West and Stitches South, and we just got back from Maker Faire Bay Area — a unique event for all things DIY (do-it-yourself) from building rockets to growing vegetables to sewing clothes to, of course, knitting, crocheting, and working with yarn!

Here are just some of my photos from this inspiring and educational (and just plain fun) event! (You can click on any of the photos to see them enlarged on Flickr.):

This is our booth, with our team inside. On the left, you can see our amigurumi and yarn tables; on the right, you can see our argyle giraffe sculpture and our kids’ craft table:
The argyle giraffe is over 8 feet tall and took our design team several months to build (he’s got a steel skeleton!) and knit. Each one of the blades of grass on his base was hand-attached by myself and three other LBYers before the start of the show. No pattern here, ladies and gentlemen — this piece is all about extreme-crafting and inspiration!
We taught knitting & crochet to people of all ages:
We also had visitors, like a woman from the baseball booth, who brought by an unraveled baseball (shown left; did you know that baseballs are made with yarn?) and one of the knitters in our booth immediately started working with the baseball yarn (shown right)! Maybe you can get your baseball-loving friends to take up knitting with this information!
We even had a celebrity stop by…
Our friend, Natalie, senior editor of Craft Magazine (a publication of the O’Reilly Media family, the company that puts on Maker Faire) also stopped by to visit. That’s Liz, Natalie, and me.
We also had a TON of kids stop by and make animals, inspired by our knit & crochet amigurumi animals and the giant argyle giraffe, with us at our craft table. Here are just a few of their creations:

Want to see the rest of my photos? Click here to see them on Flickr!

Want to make your own crafted animals? Here are a couple of patterns to
get you started:

• Wrapped Giraffe
• Wrapped Owl Picture Frame
• Pom-Pom Bee
• Wrapped Lion
• Crafted Mama Octopus and Baby

Maker Faire will be in Detroit and then coming to Lion Brand’s hometown
of New York, so check out their website to learn more about this cool event! Visit Lion Brand at upcoming events like the Knit & Crochet Show, Stitches
Midwest, and World Maker Faire in New York.

Want to know even more about our Maker Faire trip? Check out next week’s episode of YarnCraft, our radio-style podcast for interviews with fiber-enthusiasts, artists, and more, from our trip to the Bay Area!

Related links:

• The Secret Sports Life of Yarn
• Video and Pictures from Maker Faire 2009