Our Maker Life – Calgary 2019
What. A. Weekend. There is so much that goes on over this event weekend and there are so many people involved. The organizing team, plus some locals, like Chantal of Knitatude, provided a great base for meeting tons of people and having lots of opportunities to interact. I wish I had more pictures, and I wish the pictures I do have were better. Apparently my camera hates artificial light, especially in selfie mode.
As Our Maker Life approached, I found I was getting nervous. Would it be as good as I’d hoped? Would I like the people I was meeting? Would I be able to get out of my shell and actually meet people? A lot of these concerns were blasted away by one event. Late Wednesday night (really Wednesday morning), right before I headed to bed I decided to check Instagram one more time. I saw there was a story from Morgan of Morthunder, which I thought was odd since it was crazy late and I knew they were supposed to be arriving in Calgary. I watched the story and they were stranded due to an issue with their accommodations. So they took an Uber and came to my house, and when Morgan walked through the door and gave me a big hug, even though this had been a terrible start to OML for her and her husband, every single one of my concerns about the coming weekend disappeared.
Thursday – Knit Night!
Outfit: Colour Block Tank by Knitatude
Our regular knit night occurs on Thursdays, but the place we meet at (Weeds Cafe) is fairly small, and with so many people arriving it was obvious that wouldn’t be an option. So to Cabin Brewing Co. we went, and we filled the place! It felt like there were so many people to meet. It kind of felt like a red carpet event because the Ubers would pull up right at the entrance to the patio and then these famous makers would emerge and people would go crazy! I took no pictures this night, but I did get to meet Melissa of Woods and Wool and Krista (@theknittingdentist) and a whole pile of other people! I kept thinking how many people I had to meet and couldn’t believe that as we headed into the next 2 days there would be more and more people to meet!
Friday – Yarn Crawl!
Outfit: Dressed to the Max Maxi Dress by Knitatude
I experienced my first Yarn Crawl back in January when we went to Villekulla, Stash, Yarn Twisters, and Pudding for Chantal’s birthday. This time we were going to Stash, The Knitting Room, Pudding and Yarn Twisters. Of the ones we went to this time, Stash and Yarn Twisters were my favourite. They just carry my favourite indie dyers! Stash was such a great starting and finishing point, they had refreshments and a photo booth, and lots of space! And because we were all in the same place at the beginning and end of the day, you got to meet people who weren’t on your bus (since there were 3)! Yarn Twisters is always so hospitable, they had popcorn, drinks and snow cones!
Post-yarn crawl a lot of us headed to Without Papers Pizza, which is a real gem in Inglewood. And it was really great getting to know people in real life that I’ve been seeing on Instagram.
Saturday – OML!
Outfit: Brentview Crossed Tank (tentative name) by Me!
Now even more people to meet! We got there nice and early, and got to pick the perfect spot in the beautiful venue of The Pioneer. It was so perfectly Calgary. On the outside it’s brick with sandstone lentils above the windows (sandstone is one of my favourite architectural features). And inside it was bright with white walls and stone walls, it was perfect! This picture also sums up Calgary so well, you can see the Calgary Tower just above it, and reflected in the window is The Bow (with the triangle windows), currently the tallest building in the city and home to one of our most notable art pieces, Wonderland (a giant mesh head).
Maker Bingo was the perfect way to start off the morning, meeting lots and lots of people, then getting to enter your bingo card for the raffle prize of your choice, which all looked amazing thanks to lots of makers who so generously donated prizes.
Jewell started things off encouraging courage, and it was a great start to the day. Then the first keynote speaker, Stephanie (All About Ami). Quite ridiculously she was one of the only people I was too scared to talk to, and she is probably one of the sweetest people on earth. I didn’t know what to say to her and I even had a chance to talk to her at the yarn crawl, but I just said hello. Anyway, her speech was amazing! It was really interesting to hear about her experience as a blogger, especially since in the world of blogging, she’s really been doing it for quite a long time. She was inspiring, and positive and I could listen to her over and over again.
My friend Chantal was the next keynote speaker, and she is MADE for this! She was so engaging, absolutely hilarious, real, and even though I’ve witnessed her journey as a pattern designer, and heard most of her story, it was fun hearing her in this venue, and her perspective of her journey.
After lunch (Coco Brooks pizza, delicious, much better than I remembered), Laura of Jimmy Beans Wool spoke to us. Her story is incredible. And it was so buoying to hear what she thinks of us, the makers attending this event, the makers that are the ones that as a group promote fiber arts, that mean that people like her can have these businesses that support us.
The Diversity and Inclusion panel was interesting, and made some good, concise points that helped me to put some perspective on these issues that have been discussed in the knitting and crocheting community over the past 8 months. Most notably, that making statements about positions and support shouldn’t be directed at other white individuals, but rather to BIPOC makers, which put into words some of the things that had been bothering me that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Throughout the day I had brought my Ranunculus Sweater to work on, and it was really nice to have it with me to keep my hands busy. I had been trying to furiously finish it to wear to OML, but I was not quite successful. So I decided to debut my first original design, a tank top I am tentatively calling the Brentview Crossed tank. You can see the back in my story highlights on Instagram!
The last event of the day was getting our We Are Knitters and Stitch & Story kits. It was a little disappointing that we didn’t have time to actually work on them all together and everything felt like it came to a conclusion much too quickly!
After the main event, I went with a number of people to a pub nearby for dinner, and then headed to a friend’s for a knit night. We also fully unpacked our swag bags, and it was like the best part of Halloween, when you dump out your pillowcase to see what you got, and trade things with your sibling or friend!
Last year when OML was happening I wrote a blog post called “Am I a Maker?” I wasn’t sure before then who OML was for. And while most people there are designers, or makers who sell finished items, it can be anyone who loves yarn. I am a definite introvert, and I’ve attended a ton of conferences in the academic world. At none of those conferences did I move out of my introverted-ness to meet people or even to try to build or further my career. Based on who I became at OML, that was due to a lack of passion. I wanted to meet everyone. Even though I’d already been introduced to Mark and Abby of Lion Brand, I later went to just chat with Abby. That’s normally not me. And I’m really thankful that a number of my friends helped me get over some of the intimidation when meeting certain people. It was a challenge in such a short event to meet everyone, and a challenge to decide how much time to spend with my friends, and how much time to spend mingling. And then since I am an introvert, and would love to actually get to know everyone one on one, it was tough to in most cases only be able to do slightly more than small talk.
Overall this was a great experience, and I’m so glad it was in my city, and my city and province did a pretty good job showing off while people were here. Being able to take part in all 3 days of festivities made it the best possible experience, so if you go to an Our Maker Life event in the future, make sure you can plan your travel to be there for miscellaneous events beforehand, and have enough time to experience the city it’s being held in as well.
Thanks again to everyone who made the event itself happen, and also to everyone I met that made the whole thing as wonderful as it was!
