Created By Artsygal

This past friday I headed up towards the bay area with a plan. Bright and early on Saturday myself and 3 other knitters got in a car and drove to Santa Rosa where we stood in line in the rain for a little while.

Then we were herded inside where we continued to wait.

While I waited I chatted with blogless Laura who was knitting with the most amazing yarn. When I asked which yarn, she told me it was handspun! Take a look at this sock!

After about a couple of hours total of waiting, the guest of honor finally made an appearance. Who could possibly be so interesting that about 150 or so knitters were willing to wait so patiently for?

The Yarn Harlot of course! I believe that Santa Rosa was the first stop for her latest book tour promoting her collection of essays. She was her usual entertaining, insightful self.

Afterwards, we stood around in line for another hour or so waiting to get our books signed. Everyone got a chance to show off their knits, chat for a moment and take pictures.

Don't you love that tshirt? I aspire to be worthy of one someday! I'm wearing my swallowtail, knit out of some handspun I bought at MDS&W in 2007. Back in May when I went to a talk by the Harlot in Philadelphia (boy does that seem like a lifetime ago!) I wore my Shetland Tea Shawl and she asked me if I'd knit it out of handspun. I hadn't, but it got me wondering why I never use my handspun laceweight. So I pulled out a skein of my spindle spun yarn and cast on for Swallowtail. Saturday was the first time since I finished it that it was cool enough to wear wool, so it seemed appropriate to launch it that day!

Overall a wonderful knitty filled day. Other than the Harlot's talk though, I think one of the best parts of the day was the confused look on the muggles faces as they watched masses of people line up outside the bookstore, knitting away and refusing to budge even when it started raining. We got asked a few times what we were waiting for and got met with some very confused stares when we told them it was for a knitting event.