Bitches Get Stitches

warning. if the notion of a knitting celebrity is lost on you, this post might not make a whole lot of sense. just sayin’

i always feel like i need a vacation after my vacations; when i leave my “real” life behind, i invariably try to pack in as many activities as humanly possible leaving me completely drained when i get home.

which isn’t to say that my spring break wasn’t completely worth it.
i’m only saying i am bushed, bitches.

i’ll skip the details of my family fun time. this is supposed to be a blog about knitting right? suffice it to say there were a lot of movies, excessive ingestion, a piercing replacement, and one wicked game of canasta where i, of course, kicked ass.

the subplot of my week was the knitting of my first socks which would then be given to ms. stephanie pearl-mcphee (a.k.a. the yarn harlot). let me tell you, coming off my knitting olympics “win”, choosing to embark on yet another project with a radical deadline only added to my current state of exhaustion. luckily, the knitting olympics taught me the most important lessons of deadline knitting:

one. knit everywhere.

i knit in the car.
i knit in the movies.
i knit over dinner.
i knit in front of the television.

this may seem like an obvious lesson, but how many of you actually practice it? imagine how much we would finish if we knit everything as if we were on deadline!

i do warn you that knitting everywhere, while very productive, can irritate the non-knitters around you. i suffered a frown every now and then when my knitting was deemed de trop.

two. if you finish, it will always be a close call.

for instance:

here’s the (second) sock waiting with me in the friendship auditorium of the detroit public library roughly two hours before the event was scheduled to begin

i definitely wasn’t the only one stitching in the auditorium:

and look! the quasi-mythical spindle spinner:

you don’t often see them outside the yarn store. i was so happy capture an image of one in the wild.

after a couple hours of just sitting there knitting, borrowing strangers’ measuring tapes, and a phone call for a last minute kitchner stitch refresher, i finished my second sock!

two minutes later, out came the yarn harlot!
now, everyone i know who’s met her says how nice and down to earth stephanie is, but that’s not how she came off to me, or at least that isn’t what stood out most.

if someone asked me, i would say the yarn harlot is one sassy bitch!

and i love her even more because of it!

i was enthralled by every syllable of her talk; it was the perfect fusion of comedy and insight couched in personal experience. (i delighted in her anecdote of spilling coffee all the time since i had spilled my mocha a few hours earlier on my knitting olympics sweater)

she read from her forthcoming book (which she had never done before ironically enough) on knitting and self esteem. when she finished, i had a tear in my eye. i was truly moved and i cannot wait to buy it.
(and no it’s not available for pre-order on amazon. believe me i checked)

after the talk, i waited in line to get a book signed, and, most importantly, deliver my socks.
i kept rehearsing what i thought i should say so i would come off as witty and poised, like in this photo:

a photo worthy of the hipster olympics for sure.

when i got to the front of the line, and she KNEW MY NAME, any possibility of coming off as cool went out the window. she graciously accepted my socks, and posed for the obligatory fan photo with me and the socks

(note the stark difference between the “posed hipster olympics face” and the “totally geeked out to meet stephanie pearl-mcphee and she’s holding my socks face”)

the best moment of the day: addressing her assistant she said, “he seems nice.”

*faint*

so that’s my story, bitches.
i don’t know if our paths will cross again, but here’s hoping