harlot-ized

It's now 25 hours Post-Harlot and I have no idea where my BlogFairy is hiding out. I need her. She helps me write. Maybe she stayed at the book signing. If you see her, please tell her that I'm stuck-on-stupid over here, and to get her butt back home. Meanwhile, I'll try to keep my prattling to a minimum as I share a photo shoot of yesterday's visitation by the lovely Yarn Harlot.



I said it in person to them, but I'll say it again: Thank you Full Thread Ahead for hosting! I know what it takes to pull off a large event. Been there. Done that. It's a lot of work, and ya' did gooood.

The event was fun and organized. (Queen) Hollis, the store owner, was an absolute treat and a fine example of what it takes to be a business owner (and why I will probably never be one). Hollis seemed unflappable. I'd have been a bitchy stress-bucket. Her family and friends were helping, and her staff seemed wonderful, too.

The store carried some really wonderful items I'd never seen before...books, gadgets, handcrafted shawl pins, and a yarn line I'd never seen before called Cherry Tree Hill, which I fondled lovingly forever. It was gorgeous. If I wasn't already broke when I got there, I would have been by the time I left. I made it out of there for under $10 with a new pair of dpn's for socks, and a pair of US#17 cherry wood needles that were marked down to three bucks.

Here's a partial photo of the tribe. I haven't figured out the wide-angle/panorama option on my camera yet, but we were spread farther and wider and several people were waiting in the shade. There was an estimated 350 people there. It actually was the parking lot that was blocked off for the event, not the whole street. Apparently it would have cost more in permits for a full street closure...but the parking lot worked out great. Hollis said the City of Los Altos was very supportive and that she'd love to do events like this again.

So many people. So. Many. Bloggers.
There were name tags available that said, "Hi My Blog is..." and I was blown away by how many there were! I wanted to run around read all the name tags, but it seemed like an awkward and goofy thing to do. I did recognize a couple of names that I passed by, but I had wished there was some sort of roster of all the url's so I could then stay up surfin' and exercising my clicker-finger all night.

I also ran into Rita, another amputee knitter. I shouted out that we were a matching set, but she decided we weren't since we're both missing the same leg. Then she asked me if I was the "TeeHee" amputee, and said that she had sent me an email but I never responded (which sent me into deep reflection and has consequently caused me to spring into action, btw...because there are SEVERAL of you out there I owe replies to).

Anyhow, let me tell you how this shin-dig was set up, You could show up anytime after 2pm to get a pass for the book signing. Then you could leave, and come back at 4:00 to grab a chair/mark your territory. Stephanie would talk from 5:30-6:30, book signing afterwards and if you had a high number, you could leave between the talk and the singing. This made for a lot of time to stroll downtown. And eat. And sit. And knit. And eat again. And chat. And shop...which is all fine by me....but it made a lot of time for TheMIG to read his new physics book.

That's right. TheMIG came along. I was surprised he wanted to come...I'm (pretty sure) I gave him an accurate description of the timeline plus what he was in for (this would be like me going to some hi-tech convention only worse...if I was at a tech convention, nobody would talk to me and the last thing I'd be getting is people thinking I was so cute and sweet for being there). But along he came. And he sat through Stephanie's speech and laughed quite a few times, because well....how could you not. Knitter or muggle, this woman is just plain funny. I think she even cracked herself up a few times.



Anyhow, when it came to book signing time, I was to be in the 4th out of 15 waves, with 30 people per wave...gah! I got to her around 8:30, so she must have been there a loooong time. I don't know how she does it. I asked her if her right arm was bigger than her left and she told me, "Not yet," in a tone that I could never begin to describe but had me cracking up.

As soon as I sat next to her and thought about how tired she must be (I mean, just read her blog...she's a jet setter in a time warp), I felt like a twit for having brought not one, but two books up for her to sign (and I wasn't the only one who did that, either). I left the store feeling very poopy about that. But then I got into the car, and I opened the books to see what she had written, and in the second book that she'd signed for me it read:

To [TheAmpuT]~

Obsesssion is normal.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee