Eeek! Have I already been back from LA for over a week?! How did that happen? I had a few more details to share about my taping day.

On Friday at 8:00 am, someone from the studio came to the Hilton to pick up Kim, Cecily, and me. The studio is close by, so it was just a few minutes ride. Once there, we ate a little breakfast and did last-minute makeup, hair, and nail stuff. We were checked by wardrobe, hair, and makeup people to make sure we were all okay. We each rehearsed our segment with Lettie. She was very patient and let me run through mine with her three times. The last thing was getting miked and then we were off onto the stage.

Once on stage, we taped the opening part where the host, Allison, introduces us. Then each of our three segments was taped separately, with one run-through with the host before the cameras started rolling.

They cut once right near the beginning of my segment because there was a clanging noise. It had been my aluminum hook hitting the work table. The next take went fairly smoothly.

You may remember seeing Ian holding up a script in a photo on the Crochet me blog. Well, that’s not all he holds up. He also holds up the little cards that say 2 min, 1 min, 30 sec, 15 seconds. You get the idea. We were told to look only, only, only at the host or our project during our demo, nowhere else. Unfortunately I have quite good peripheral vision and near the very end of my segment I caught Ian out of the corner of my eye. Naturally I looked over. And there he was holding the 15 second card. My mind went blank. I’m not sure exactly what happened after that, but somehow I started talking again and made a mistake, but the host quickly corrected me and I giggled and said something like, yes, that’s right. Overall it seemed to be a smooth recovery. Kim said it sounded natural. It must have been good enough because they didn’t ask for a retake. I won’t know what it actually looks like until it the episode airs.

The final segment of the episode included all three of us with the host. We showed additional projects we’d made to go with the theme of the show. It took several retakes because we were having difficulty filling the last 30 to 15 seconds. Every time each of us, including the host, tried to add a little more to what we were talking about, and at last we made it. Because this was the last segment of the episode it had to exactly fill the remaining time. That’s difficult!

By the time we were done it was 2 pm and we were definitely ready for lunch! We ate at the studio and then were driven back to the hotel. I thought I would nap. I’m sure I should have, but instead I hung out with Kim and Cecily until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. I had to, it was my last night in LA!

I don’t know how well I did, but I don’t think I did poorly. I won’t know for sure until the episode airs because I haven’t seen it! The thing is that I did it, though, and that’s what matters to me. The whole thing was a fantastic experience, not just being on TV, but meeting and working with the other designers from Crochet me. I would do it again in a heartbeat.