Stitches West '09

I love knitters. I love how strangers can go up and talk to each other as if they've known each other for their whole lives. I love that camaraderie that comes with knitting. Here are two quotes that I picked up today. Remember, these people have never met each other.

One woman was wearing yarn around her neck. Another woman approached her, saying, "Oh my, you're wearing the yarn! It looks beautiful on you!" Then she went on her way.

Two women were looking at rainbow roving displayed in braids. One woman said, "Wow, it's so beautiful! But what do you do with it?" The other replied, "You hang it up and look at it!"

Also, I struck up conversation with many of the owners of the booths. Generally all were friendly, especially those at the wooden hooks & needles booth (the owner knew I was eying those rosewood crochet hooks). The owner warmly informed me that I was more than welcome to try any of the hooks. I grabbed one labeled "G" and started working on one of the 200 baby hats I need to make for charity. She saw me struggling a bit with the hook because it was too long for me, and promptly supplied me with a shorter one (7"). I started working at a rapid speed, and all of a sudden everyone at the booth went quiet and the owner just stared at me. She gaped in awe and said, "Looks like we have a competitor against Lucy Chen!" I don't exactly know who Lucy Chen is, but they were so sweet, I ended up buying that very hook just before we left. It's a beautiful Rosewood, but it cost a whopping $32. Regardless, it was worth it.

Oh yes, and I got a little tutorial on spinning. I never really had understood it before, but now it seems so simple. I've got to give it a try one of these days. Yikes I'm so busy though; I'll probably have to wait until summer.

OH. And a huge thing happened to me too. So me, my mom, and my aunt were gathered around this superhuge needle and hook booth, when I notice the guy trying out the huge needles. He is wearing a red Boston Symphony Orchestra shirt, so of course I asked him if he was a part of it. He looked at me, and responded that he was not a musician but his partner was; his partner played oboe. Apparently his partner was once an oboist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but is now playing for the San Francisco Symphony. He introduced me to the oboist, Jonathan Fischer. He asked me what I played, so of course I said that I played violin and bass clarinet. "Bass clarinet?" he asked. "Not regular clarinet?" "No" I replied, "I can sort of play it but I don't like it as much as I like bass." "Ah, early specialization. That's good."

So the long and the short of it is that I had an awesome knitting day and an awesome music day. It's pretty awesome being the knitting musician. :)

(Oh yes, and the videos I've been taking at http://www.youtube.com/anonymousenough have gotten me fame at school... sort of. I got interviewed and journalism is going to publish an issue in the school newspaper about students [that go to our school] who use youtube.)