It’s Sunday morning, and I’m writing this post from heaven knows how high in the air, winging my way from St. Louis to Dallas, then from Dallas to Austin.  (I’m trying not to think about how the next day I go from Austin back to Dallas. It’s too much to accept intellectually.  The only way through it is to live it.)  I’ll try to hit send on it when I’m on the ground changing planes.  My timelines are so tight today… I think I’ll go straight from the airport to the Austin signing.  I bet I’ll look amazing.  Let’s go back to yesterday – shall we, when I met the St. Louis knitters and had a really lovely time.  I spoke in a church (I think the irony that a harlot was speaking in that locale was fun for all of us) – and knitters filled the pews.

(For those of you who have ever been asked not to knit in church, this moment may have a certain feeling of vindication in it.)  Afterwards, I signed books and chatted, and look who I met.

This is Jackie and Marie, and they’re firsts for me.  They had me sign their e-readers.  (I’d been wondering what authors were going to do as more and more books become digital, and I guess it might be like this.)

There was Stephanie and Alice,

and this is Reina and Skye…

and this is Kate, Joanna and Hamza, who was absolutely quiet during the whole talk, though he did make his mama dance at the back to make that happen.

Meet Vicky, who was rooting for the Cardinals like nobody’s business.  (I don’t know if you all know this, but the world series is on and St. Louis is in it.  I had no idea – and in my defense, remember that it’s not actually the WORLD series, so it’s not always top of the news in other countries. I figured it out fast.) 

Vicky even dressed up her dog Daisy – but just for the Cardinals home opener.  It’s not like she does it all the time. 

Emma and Abby were there with their first socks.

Kate, oh – let me tell you about Kate.

At 4:30pm the day before I came, Kate decided that she wanted to represent her friend Rachel’s yarn at the signing, and so she knit a Traveling Woman in 12 hours.  Just like that.  That one.  That’s she’s wearing. She even claims that she slept and ate – and still had a small shawl in 12 hours of knitting.  I have a feeling that she doesn’t knit so fast that I couldn’t do it too, so I’ll be doing a little test soon. 

In the category of nice people – we have Liz, who isn’t even a knitter, but discovered that the answer to the question "How much do you love your mother?" was in fact…

"Enough to go to a talk and a booksigning for you, mum.  Of course."

Finally, meet Cameron, who was there for his brother Joseph, who sort of made him come. 

It’s true, Cameron is a knitter, that’s his second and third knitting projects in his hands, but he wasn’t there for himself. His big brother made him go.  Made him email verification that he understood his mission, then text confirmation that he had arrived, and then send a photo proving that he was in the right spot with a book.   I told Cameron that I’d post this picture to prove to Joseph that he did it right.  Joseph, he did it all.  Listened, showed me his projects, and got a book signed for you.  I wrote something special in there for you. You’re brother is very nice.

Finally, a sweater update.  Friday was just a travel day – a flight and a car ride but no event, and in book tour land, that’s a "rest" day.   I was super excited, and tackled Gwendolyn.  I know a lessor knitter would probably have given up by now, and it really does look like that sweater sort of has bad Juju, but I’m positive that I can come out on top, and there’s no way I’m letting a piece of knitting get away with resisting its destiny like this.  This yarn will be this sweater whether it wants to or not. Mark my words. 
Instead of ripping the front back to the mis-scrossed cable and re-knitting, I tried a bolder approach.  I figured that if it didn’t work, I could still rip back and reknit.
I identified the mis-crossed cables, and since they’re both on one row, I found the single strand of yarn that was that row of knitting.  The exact row where I went wrong.

Then I snipped it.

Then I gently teased that strand of yarn out…

Then I started to graft back together the stitches, this time crossing the cables the way that I should have in the first place.

It was tedious, and a little fiddley, but took so much less time than re-knitting would have.  I blocked it last night and  with any luck, I’ll be doing the making up and button bands tomorrow.  Just in time for Dallas, where – in the final proof that the sweater is a pain in the arse that likes sticking it to me, I absolutely won’t need a sweater.