I partied like a....Harlot!

Thursday night... Borders at Bailey's Crossroad's ... 3:00pm ... Coleen, Erin and I arrive on the scene...

We find the end of the line and join the others for some knitting and talking while we wait for our ticket...



Ticket for what? To see the Stephanie Pearl McPhee ... aka the Yarn Harlot... of course! We knew we'd have to get there early to get good seats - so we arrived about oh.... 4 hours early! The time sped by though as we sat, knit, talked and met new friends.

Here are my girls Coleen and Erin.




Rosana - came to hang out too. She is so sweet and doesn't she have the greatest smile ever!



I was very impressed with how Borders handled everything. Around 5:30 they handed out tickets for the book signing. I got number 19. We were then able to go and get seats for the talk.

We arrived in time to get the second row - right behind Amber!
Amber was there with her mom - aren't they just the cutest?



She was also there with her friend Judy.



Soon - the cafe was filled with knitters - all knitting, drop spindling and even crocheting while they waited.





Soon - the crowd grew quiet and we knew it was time. The regional manager came up to introduce Stephanie and had with him a knit hat. He told a sweet story about how he's had that hat for years. A friend had knit him the hat when he was in high school and he still kept it after all this time. I think he was rather overwhelmed by the sheer number of knitters in the audience!




Finally - he introduced Stephanie and the crowd went wild. Here she is peeking around the corner about to go on stage.



When she got up to speak - the microphone was WAY too tall.



The manager was trying to adjust it for her without much luck.... but leave it to Stephanie - she finally fixed it herself!



After some general housekeeping (the requisite sock photo)...



She spoke about everything knitting and it was just hilarious!



It was a perfect night. She took questions afterwards and one woman asked about Irish cottage knitting. It's basically a variation of the production knitting that was going on in Scotland and Ireland when woolen goods were being knit as quickly as possible by the locals to try to make a living. It turns out this is the way Stephanie herself knits. She gave us a quick example...



It's so cool - knitting and purling look almost identical. It's so quick - you can't believe it. I actually found a video showing how it's done.


After her talk - we headed up to get our books signed. Then we waited and waited and waited until about midnight when the last book was finally signed. Then Erin, Coleen, Rosana, Eunny and I took Stephanie out for a drink. She was so much fun to hang out with. We talked about everything from knitting to politics. It was a great night!

Thanks for an awesome night ladies!