Nice to Meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

As I mentioned on Thursday, we went to see "The Yarn Harlot" speak at BookPeople. I am glad that it wasn't as crowded as the last time she came (from what I heard--I couldn't come that time). I'm also really glad that Tina drove, since she has even better parking luck than I do, and we got a great spot.


We hiked right on up to the third floor, past the people who grabbed the best seats, and enjoyed a lovely little reception that the Hill Country Weavers folks put on. (That's blurry Tina and me, enjoying the stuff.) The food was great, and I'll tell you one thing--there are a nice bunch of knitters in the Austin area! Each yarn shop was allowed to send a few of their workers or customers, which means I got to see a lot of people I don't get to see very often (like blogger Sally and designer/blogger Birdy (who I somehow didn't get a photo of...darn!).

This is me and Sally, though her camera has better color correction than mine and her photo looks better.

We also saw old friends and met a new one! This is Alla, Cindy and me with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I don't know how she manages to be so gracious and attentive to so many different people on these book tours, and it could not have been a great day for her--she was all stuffed up and had been dealing with the Sock Summit stuff for two days. I now, of course, feel REALLY sorry for her, since I've heard how mean some people were about the fact that they couldn't get in for one reason or another.

I did have a nice chat with her (right after saying I was too shy to go talk to her), about an organization we both used to belong to, and mutual friends in the Ontario birthing and breastfeeding community. I thanked her for how she portrays her children, parenting, and love of babies in her blog. Seeing someone who shares a philosophy with me putting it out so publicly, yet subtly. I hope she influences a lot of young knitters.

We had plenty of time to chat. I caught up with some friends I hadn't seen in a long time (people who no longer visit our yarn shop, people I knew from the knitting guild, etc.), networked and really got a lot out of talking to all kinds of knitters, not just the famous author! The photo above is just Cindy and chatting--people kept on knitting the whole time. What a fine culture.
Hey, and did I mention babies earlier? There were plenty for Stephanie to enjoy, but I got to enjoy one in particular, and she enjoyed me right back. Is that not a sweet face? She liked me! Goodness gracious, that was a charming baby for one so young. She had everyone in her spell. If you read the comments on the last blog entry, you'll know that KnitterGran said I might see her daughter and granddaughter, and that's them! I'm hoping we will see each other again, especially when KnitterGran comes to town. See, told you there were lots of nice people.

And yes, eventually we went to hear Stephanie talk. Every blogger in town has already posted a bunch of photos of this, so I am not going overboard. Before the talk, Spike Gillespie (local celebrity humorous writer, radio commenter AND knitter) thanked all the yarn shops and said nice stuff about each of them, even our little suburban oasis! And then we all got to thoroughly enjoy a well-crafted, humorous and informative talk (it would have been more informative if I hadn't read a lot of the same research she had read). I had a good time listening, regardless, and am very glad she's willing to do these tours.


Of course, there weren't enough seats, so we ended up sitting on a table. That's OK. There were nice knitters there! It is hard to convince stores that there really are that many knitters willing to come out on a weeknight. There would have been more people on a weekend, for sure, and all the end of school events weren't going on.

Thanks to Stephanie for visiting and to the book store for hosting!

In Other News

After networking with Susan from the Knitting Guild, I visited the Knit Wits, who meet at the library near Westlake High School on Fridays. It was really fun to meet some new knitters. They had a range from some very elderly ladies to new mothers. I loved seeing all their projects and listening to all their news. A whole new set of folks. Mostly I talked to two women I'd met when I went to the guild meetings (before I was teaching knitting on Saturdays). It was funny to see how much we had in common in our career paths, in addition to knitting.

Also we got new yarn at the LYS, which has been fun. Everyone got all excited about the sock yarn, laceweight yarn and the Misti Alpaca we are going to use in our knit-along. I am happy to see the excitement.

Tomorrow I will post about knitting progress!

Amended: I realized I was quite tired when I wrote this and forgot a couple of things, like saying WHO I saw, linking to people and places, and thanking the photographers (Cindy and Tina, because I forgot my camera). I will add links tomorrow.