Friday morning I was up early. Stretched, showered, dressed and out the door of my hotel room by 7 am. This day would start with an early transport and then a full day of meetings at the trade show. Prior to traveling, I had to pick meetings with a variety of vendors or accept/decline requests from them for meetings. 15 minute meetings. Aaaaaallll day.

Here’s what it looked like:

It was frenetic. Also informative. Even kind of fun. I met with representatives in the travel industry from primarily the Scandinavian and Eastern European countries, as that’s the direction I’m leaning for research over the next couple years. By the end of the day, I was pretty talked out. I had an amazing array of booklets, business cards and swag (paraphernalia with logos on it, handed out at shows and conferences to keep that company in the forefront of your mind).

I did quite enjoy that every meeting I went to, this was the opening comment from the representative at the booth: “Oh! The knitting people!” Almost everyone had as many questions for me as I had for them. Some had already prepared with information and ideas on where to travel in their country as well as what to see, people in the community related to knitting, textiles in general, and handcraft traditions. It was lovely!

At the end of the day, we had an opportunity to go back to our rooms for two hours before going onward to an evening event. I promptly fell asleep on my bed. When I woke up, it was long past the bus pickup time. I was fine with that! It was down to the bar for me. A beer plus fish and chips plus writing to you good people. I was in bed by 10: for the 7 am departure the next morning. I set three alarms and asked for a wake up call. We’d be flying north to the small town of Husavik in the morning. I did not want to miss an adventure like that!