Thank You Monsieur Tweed!

Well hooray and three cheers for Brooklyn Tweed! BT aka Jared Flood, somehow managed to exceed everyone’s admittedly awfully high expectations for his visit last week. A lingering cold and wedding duties kept me from attending any of his classes (boohoo!) but I heard from the team at the store that folks were calling in just gushing about their in-class lessons with Jared.

I did manage to attend the reception for Monsieur Tweed, held last Friday night. That was super-awesome. We had excellent snacks, including what appeared to be the stolen contents of at least four little kids’ Halloween treat bags. There was a yarn tasting with little sample bags of tweed for all. And, best of all, there was our guest of honor who, faced with a roomful of gushing women old enough to be his… well, let’s say his aunt… held his own.

The evening’s highlight came when BT offered us a slideshow of his work, and talked about how he put together his new book of patterns. In case you didn’t know, BT is/was a photographer first. He takes a lot of his design inspiration from architecture he photographs. So he showed us pictures from all over—the Pacific Northwest (where he grew up), Brooklyn (where he lives now), and Italy (where he spent a year after college). So cool to compare and contrast the scenic nature of the West with the busyness of the East—for example, on a split screen he showed majestic, snow capped Mount Rainier on the left, and a Manhattan sunset on the right. And also great to see (and hear him tell) about all the textural inspiration just living in Italy provides. I especially dug this blue hat he modeled after the architectural masterpiece, The Seattle Public Library. I don’t think the pattern for that is in the book but I MUST GET IT.

We also found out some interesting details from The Life of Brooklyn Tweed:
His mom taught him to knit.
He prefers knitting home alone quietly.
His stash is not large enough to constitute a fire hazard.
He sure is nice.
He’s a huge fan of Japanese knitting.
He’s addicted to photos in British lifestyle magazines (they are very woolly).

Thanks for coming to Austin, Jared. We sure had a great time meeting you. Come back soon, hear?