Home and rewinding

So, I’m home. Home, home, home. It’s dirty, disorganized, full of people and a cat who resent that I ever left at all, and I have a ton of work to do and an inbox that’s so scary that I can’t hardly look at it, but I’ve never, ever been happier to see this little hovel. This morning marks the first morning of the rest of my life, it feels like, with the book tour over, and just a few little stops (The North York Public Library tomorrow, Philadelphia Book Fair, A retry (I hope) of Chicago, BEA, TNNA….) left to go, like there is tons of room in my life, just as soon as I get caught up…which I know is unrealistic, but I could be closer…right? Right. First steps, getting caught up on the blogging. I owe San Francisco a post about the Maker Faire and Salt Lake City a post about how wonderful that was, so I’d better get a move on.

San Francisco. I love that place. It’s home to two podcasts I know and love, Stash and burn

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Oh look…It’s Nicole and Jenny! We found a quiet corner of the hotel and did a podcast that I think went pretty well. (Neither one of them looked angry when we were done, so I think I did an okay job) both of them are lovely and super nice, and when they were done they handed me off to Stephen and WonderMike from YKnit, and I did another one…which sort of came apart at the seams a few times, but there’s only so much I can do in the face of their particular brand of silliness.

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(By the way? We went to dinner after at Millennium. Go there now. After a month of hotel and airport food Stephen and Mike can both verify that I almost wept into my dinner out of sheer relief and joy.)

The next morning I got up and got in a car to go to San Mateo, where the Maker Faire was at. The Faire is a seriouly cool undertaking. It’s just a whole fairgrounds of people….making. Making all sorts of stuff. Music, art, tools, sculpture, code, toys…. It was very, very brilliant to see knitting lumped in with that sort of crowd.

I took a bunch of pictures of some of the Makers. You’ve just got to click to embiggen.

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There was tons of fibre related stuff too. Aside from the free range knitters and spinners who were everywhere, there was this guy who was knitting and drumming at the same time, which was totally cool except he looked miserable.

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There was a lovely booth with Tactile and A Verb for Keeping Warm (which may be the best name ever)

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and I saw Imagiknit and Lion Brand were both there, and I talked to the Yarn Craft blog gals for two minutes… I saw cool knit tats,

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along with Ceallach Dyes, who was out in the sunshine, making what she makes, which is solar dyeing of yarn. (Beautiful yarn.)

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I saw a multitude of knitter/makers. Although they were a little hard to photograph, because there were these lights shining on me that were like looking into the sun.

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They were easier to see afterwards. Knitters came (of course) with babies and little kids, since this was family/kid heaven. Meet Cindy and Zoe (she’s wearing a fabulous sweater), Elizabeth and Nathan (Nathan is showing me his monkey that his mama made for him at sock camp. The pattern for the monkey is up and available here.) Michelle and Katherine, Kimber and Sarah, Anabel and Freya. There was a young knitter too, Kelsey, but she was a very pretty 12 years old, and 12 years old isn’t old enough to understand bad pictures of yourself on the internet. The photo I took was nowhere near as lovely as she was, so I skipped it.

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Team Unraveled, walking the three day. (That link will take you to a place to pledge them)

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Carrie brought her monkey and her Monkey Kaw Kaw

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Shane came for his wife, Amanda

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and Jessica knit me a beer. (Two of my favourite things in one combo.)

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There was the first sock brigade: Anne, Kelly, Katie and Jan (Katie’s the one with the first sock) Yellay, Rhiannon, No-blog Rachel, Julie, Sue, Ruth, Sarah and Jennie.

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and there were even Washcloths (I do love the washcloths) from Lynne, Robin and Madeleine.

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Whew! I’d love to write about what happened next, how I went to Salt Lake City (still has no air there) but I’m two hours gone working on this blog entry now, and frankly, I need to clean the house for at least that long just to get it to it’s usual level of squalor. I’ll write about SLC tomorrow.

If you’d like to come to see me at the North York Central Library tomorrow, (May 7th) I’m speaking at 7:00 as part of the Uptown Authors series. I’ll be doing something a little different for this event, more discussion and interaction with the audience, which I think will be smaller and more intimate than other events. If you’ve been burning to ask me a question and you live anywhere near Toronto, here’s your chance to pester me publicly for an answer. Call 416-395-5639 to register, and I’ll see you there.