Have you been desiring to be a part of HiveFest in some kind of way?
Many of us don’t have the means or resources for getting there in person but what if our creativity could be present? What if our community could be represented there with the needlework we make?
This post is to share with you what we discussed, all of the ideas that came about and to see how many needleworkers would be interested in participating.
We’ll also be looking for some further ideas and feedback from you all to help us determine if this will be possible.
Recently Hive account@livinguktaiwan shared this awesome post about her visit up north in UK. As she was walking through a themed park she found several knitted bears peeking out of the bushes. Each one had a tag giving instructions for the finder to take it home.
This gave her an idea for our community to do the same at HiveFest. She suggested we make small items to place around the event for people to grab and take home. We could place our Hive handles somewhere on the item so people would know who made it.
@Shanibeer then joins the conversation and she and I further discuss things on discord. She suggested we make these little needlework tokens to be included in the swag bags they give away to the participants ever year. With that, we would need to know where to send these items to and have someone there willing to distribute the items into the bags.
Depending on how many needleworkers we have to participate and how many tokens we can make it may be a situation of putting them randomly into the bags…meaning every attendee might not receive one.
We even talked about running a selfie contest after the fest asking those who received a token to share a post about it mentioning who it came from. As Hive account@shanibeer stated
This would be a fun community activity and awesome to see where in the world our little needlework treats ended up. It would also be a good way to make connections between accounts.
I chatted with Hive account@livinguktaiwan a bit more and based on her experience at HiveFest she suggested if we can’t arrange for someone to distribute the items in the bags, the best way might be just handing them out directly.
Finally, after all of this discussion I reached out to Hive account@roelandp through the HiveFest Gmail (thanks to Hive account@anomadsoul for that tip) and shared these ideas. He gave me a speedy response and really thought this was a pretty cool idea!
Of course with the ticket shop just opening there is not yet an accurate number of how many attendees there will be. However, he did give me a few options on how we could do this:
mail the needlework items directly to him or the hotel and they would make sure they get placed in the goodie bags
if we want to just give them to specific people the items could be placed in a box at the wristband/badge exchange desk - we would just have to inform those people to pick up their items
make arrangements with one or more people who will be in attendance to help us get the items distributed
So that’s where we are folks and here’s
what we need to know from you:
• If you are interested in making small needlework take homes please respond and let us know in the comments below. These need to be small, light-weighted and able to stand up a bit for rough handling. For instance, placing intricate beadwork on them won’t be a good idea. You can make any needlecraft you wish ;)
• Would you be able to mail your item(s) to Amsterdam? Based on the amount of interest we have we can discuss and plan more on the best way to get these items there. We could even possibly help a few with shipping expenses by using some funds from this account.
• If you are planning to attend this year’s fest and are willing to help distribute/ handout these tokens please let us know.
• Ideas, ideas, ideas! We would love to make this idea a reality so we are open to any other suggestions or advice you might have. Please feel free to share them ;)
All photos are my own. I made the crocheted candy treats with thisfree pattern.
Thanks Hive account@roelandp for your help and for sending me the HiveFest logo files to use for the cover photo!
