As we all know by now, your local Yarn Harlot is, to the general public anyway, Nobody. I go nowhere good, I don’t travel in celebrity circles and I don’t get invited to the kinds of places that you all hope for. My life is miraculously, quietly boring, and it is staggering to me that you come here every day. My Darling Joe, on the other hand, is wildly interesting. He knows people. He goes places, and he mucks about in the wilds of the Canadian music business like it’s the grocery store, largely unaware that he is So. Freakin. Cool. My favourite illustrative points about how Joe is unaware of his own coolness, is the year he won a Juno, he didn’t even watch it on TV. He didn’t know he’d been nominated (and lost…but he lost to “Snatch“) for a Golden Reel award until he discovered it while working on his resume.
Because Joe is so cool, I sometimes get to go to places where they don’t let ordinary people like me in. (Once, while at the opening party for Festival Express, I passed Sylvia Tyson toilet paper.) Since this sort of excitement only happens occasionally, there is always a wardrobe crisis of epic proportions when I am called upon to accompany my cool mate to the cool places. This time however, I was ready. When we got the invitation to Jose and Lily’s wedding, I knew that I had this.

We mixed, we mingled, we danced (well, I danced, it is better if Joe doesn’t) we ate little tiny foods, I dangled my drink and stood beside Joe as he talked to fancy people. It was terrifying. (It is a little known fact that I am shy. Horribly, terribly, shy. I manage to fake outgoing and confident rather well, but inside…I am quaking)
Ryan, the Dublin Bay socks came with us, and had a spectacular time, fearlessly hanging out with Canadian Rock Stars and dazzling locals. The Bride and Groom even took a moment to thank the sock-in-progress for coming.

Most awkward moment award: (and oddly, no..it wasn’t getting the Bride and Groom to pose with a sock in progress at their wedding, somehow that felt natural.) We were standing next to a Manager and Publicist, who were introducing us all around. Joe gets the big long introduction, that he’s a producer, that he owns a big studio, that he is formally “cool”. Then she turns to introduce me. Now at these events I’m really lucky if I maintain my name. Generally speaking, I walk through the door and I am suddenly no longer Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, fine and interesting person in her own right but merely the ornamental “Joe’s wife”. (I have leaned that it is counterproductive to fight this at the moment that I am being introduced. All attempts to maintain my independent role in the universe have resulted in episodes that end with me being more likely to be introduced as “Joe’s insane wife” at the next event.) This time however it appeared that the sweetie of a publicist was going to give me an actual identity….I was staggered, and shocked, and I waited to see which of my life roles I would be assigned today. Would she say I was a Doula? Childbirth Educator? An IBCLC? Perhaps in this crowd she would go with “Freelance Writer”? Or maybe she’ll mention how I worked for a Native Health Centre for a few years, how exciting! Perhaps after I was introduced with a job and a life I would be able to talk to someone instead of just standing next to Joe. The suspense is killing me when she leans forward out of the din of the band and says:
“This is Stephanie….she….is a knitter.”
The little hub of cool people stare at me, then look back at the publicist. Perhaps they heard her wrong? Knitter? Seriously? Like, with yarn? All day? They glance at Joe, perhaps hoping that he will explain what someone with his level of cool factor is doing with a “knitter”, or that perhaps that they had misheard, and I’m a “fitter” or “neurosurgeon”. Joe is not correcting them though, he is grinning like an idiot, nodding agreement with the publicist. Knitter it is. I decide that there’s nothing for it. If I try to tell them that I am more than a knitter, or that knitting is fascinating, or that it’s not like I “only” knit…for crying out loud, I’m going to look desperate. (Which I am, but I really thought it was better to play that at little closer to the vest).
The cool people wander off and I stand there, thinking that I might have been slightly better off when I was “Joe’s wife”.
It was right then that I decided to take the Dublin Bay socks out of my purse. What the hell, I had nothing to lose, I am a knitter.