I’m here, I’m here.

I’m fine. Didn’t mean to go so long between posts, but an impending set of twins sent up a warning flag over the weekend and I lost a bunch of organizational time to playing “find the fetal heart tones” in a Toronto hospital. Mum and babies are fine right now, but there’s no way that I’m going to get the 7-9 weeks of knitting time on these wee peanuts that I was hoping for. The babies are coming in that charming boy/girl pairing that’s so much fun for a knitter. I’m knitting and packing and writing and cleaning up eggs so today you get a speed blog.

I have trashed this…

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In favour of this.

Lilysweatbeg1

Better? Don’t answer that. I answered it myself when I realized that the only thing I left behind at Juno’s house was the yarn for that first one. My subconscious was way ahead of me. (Should have been a tip off that Juno and Cassie kept saying “Are you sure you want to be knitting that?” Subtle women those two.) Also on the needles…

Potomatoesbeg3

Potomoto-mato-po-mus….something like that. It’s a charming pattern but I’ll be damned if I can get the name right. I’m enthralled by them. The pattern is not so nearly hard as it looks but I wouldn’t advise going nighty-night at any point in the chart.

I’m on a plane tomorrow headed for the next stops on the book tour (I have never been so thrilled to be so exhausted and frightened) so I think I better wrap up where I’ve been before I get somewhere else.

Loop

Loop in Philadelphia is a truly beautiful shop. I didn’t know this before I got there, so Juno and I planned a stop at Rosie’s on the way. I love Rosie’s. Every once in a while a knitter finds a shop where the owners sense and taste is in perfect harmony with their own and well. Rosie’s is not like that. Lisa’s sense and taste is far superior to my own. Just breathing the air in that place costs me money. I had a nasty accident there. The kind of accident Rachel describes where you slip and fall in a yarn shop and accidentally swipe your mastercard on the way to the floor?

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Yup. Diakeito Diarufran. Beautiful Japanese chained yarn in all the colours of a soft forest floor. (Fetchingly named “211”.) It’s a supersoft merino and has incredible yardage. I bought it so fast that I scared myself. I must have scared Juno too, since she slammed me, my new yarn and my still smoking credit card into the Junomobile and (after a really nice visit with Anj and Sue) whipped me into Loop, perhaps hoping that I’d taken the edge off at Sophie’s.

Wrong. Loop is a beautiful store and now I was in trouble. Two yarn shops in Philly as beautiful as the other. Different and charming. Ying and Yang. One a cellar with yarn for the discovering in every scintillating corner, one bright and airy with yarn gleaming at me from every surface, and knitters everywhere.

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Loopcr2

They look like they are looking at me, but they are totally there for the yarn. Look at the glints in their collective eyes.

There was Sherry, knitty d, Chelle, Wendy , The Villiage Knittiot (I love that blog name) and, man. So many that I know I can’t possibly get them all. Sing out in the comments if I missed you. The lady who made my evening was Eliza.

Emilyeliza

Eliza is seen here holding book 2 open to the page that (get this.) The page that made her knit socks. She was uninitiated, unknitterly. Lacking in the ways of wool and needles and the book corrupted her. Something I wrote turned her into a knitter.

My work in Philadelphia is done.