Just Knitting Around

It was so nice to meet you today in Lexington. You are a delightful person and my daughter and I both loved you. I talked her into coming with me at the last minute, and I encouraged her to bring her knitting. I taught her to knit shortly after I taught myself about a year and a half ago. Although she claims to enjoy knitting, she just hasn’t seemed to become as obsessed enamoured with it as I have. Your enjoyment of our matching socks and the fact that you took a picture of our feet really tickled her. She has begun to read At Knit’s End already, and keeps finding things in it that fit me to a tee. I had only planned on having you sign Knitting Rules which I brought with me, but with all of the books sitting there, I had to buy the first two as well and get them signed too. When we returned from buying souvenirs after lunch, your line was long so I am glad we came early.

The souvenir yarn shop, Stitch Niche, was a real treat. It was about 3.5 miles from the convention center and had nice yarn. Katie fell in love with a cotton crusher hat they had on display. The only problem, it was (sshhh) crocheted. I know how to crochet, I actually learned as a child from my grandma. I just don’t like to do it, so I found a similar knitted pattern and we got yarn in her preferred colors.

I also bought my first KPPPM and plan to knit Sivia Harding’s Diamond Fantasy Shawl with it.

I hope mine turns out as well as yours. I knit the free bookmark on her website that uses the same diamond lace in it, so I think I can handle it.

While we waited until it was time for your talk, Katie made friends with a children’s book author, Devin Brown who wrote the book Not Exactly Normal. It sounds like a wonderful story, and he autographed her book and offered to come and speak at her school. His wife and mother were also there and they are knitters! They enjoyed seeing her knitting and our socks. They came and sat in on your talk too. You will laugh at this, he asked us what a knitter who didn’t write pattern books would write about! I’m sure his wife and mother filled him in.

My DD, Katie, thought you were hilarious. She never knew anyone could make knitting so funny. You only said “arse” once, and even though she giggled at the mention of the “willy warmer”, she didn’t ask about why it would need to be ribbed, so I think that part went over her head. She really laughed at your story about the Knitting Olympics and the bank teller who told you how crazy those people must be. She also really enjoyed your little meditation at the end. Since you end each talk with it, I won’t spoil it for those who will come hear you in the future.

I met lots of friendly knitters today. I even finally met in person a knitter I met online last year. Beth once sent an email to the Socknitters list with a link to her blog. When I cliked on her link, there was a picture of her dog Pearl, catching a disc. The photograph was attributed to my brother who is the potographer of their disc dog group, the Southern Ohio Flying K9s. Since then, we have exchanged emails and commented on each other’s blogs. Even though we both live in Cincy, it took a trip to Lexington to see you before we met.

Thanks for signing our books and for being so friendly to us. On the ride home to Cincinnati, one of Katie’s first ideas was that we should plan a trip to a city with lots of yarn shops and spend the day going from one to the other. I think she may have been assimilated…

Oh BTW, I saw Jane Fonda too…and I think Sue Grafton was there–somewhere…

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 8:49 pm and is filed under feet, knitting, The Knitting Olympics 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.