The Yarn Harlot

If you are reading this post, there is a 95% chance that you did not know that there are knitting celebrities. The other 5% of you realize this, and probably got to this blog through a link on my wife's blog, The Kilted Cafe (see Links to Love). My wife, you see, happens to work for The Yarnery on Grand Avenue in St. Paul and is quite the knitter. She has knitted some pretty sweet felted slippers for the entire family, which I happen to be wearing right now as I type this. (I am wearing slippers in April, by the way, because the temperatures outside are more like mid-January. As Joe Soucheray would say, "more proof of global warming.") Anyway, my wife has been working hard to bring a knitting celebrity to St. Paul. She hit the jackpot by signing up Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, THE YARN HARLOT, in for an appearance. Pearl-McPhee is the Mick Jagger of knitting (and a successful author), you see, so she's quite a catch.

My wife worked quite hard, with the other members of The Yarnery, to plan the event. She served as Event Coordinator. There was a lot of fretting and gnashing of teeth during the preparations. Creating and maintaining the sign up list (400 strong!) and the waiting list were a lot of laughs for my wife. Apparently, some people were a little bummed when the list of 400 was full, and their hopes to "just show up" were dashed. (By the way, The Police are playing a concert at the Xcel Energy Center on July 3rd. I plan on "just showing up" for this. Do you think there will be a problem getting in? If there is, I am going to be pissed.) Anyway, the Big Day came on April 4th, and the event went off without a hitch. THE YARN HARLOT showed up, everyone got a seat due to some cancellations, Oh Canada was sung by the crowd, and autographs were signed. All of my wife's hard work paid off.

The event was so big, in fact, that THE YARN HARLOT appeared on Kare 11 and Cities 97. The Star Tribune sent in a reporter to cover the whole thing and get some quotes. And who was interviewed? My wife! Here is her quote from the story:

The Yarnery, a Grand Avenue mainstay for 22 (which is incorrect, by the way) years, has knitting classes every night and had to place 60 yarners on a waiting list for Pearl-McPhee's appearance. The store's event coordinator, Maura Thompson, said a surge of interest in knitting began "four or five years ago, not long after 9/11, although we're not sure how much of a factor that was." The day of the gathering, the store was packed from midday on.
"A lot of people made this a knitters' day off," said Thompson. "For us, it's like if George Clooney was going to be on 'Prairie Home Companion.'

Clooney? What does he have to do with knitting? Now, my wife is the one in the family with the smarts and good memory. But every time we see a movie with George Clooney she gets this glazed, euphoric look on her face and I have to explain the whole plot to her once the flick is over. It seems, you see, that she doesn't seem to pay as much attention to the details of the plot when Clooney is involved. Oh well. You know, I'll probably be interviewed on the day that the new Twins ballpark opens, and I've already got my quote down. It will sound something like this:

Star Tribune, April 12th, 2010:

The crowd didn't seem to mind the temperatures in the low 50's for the first outdoor Twins game in Minnesota since 1981. Jeff Thompson of St. Paul had this to say from the standing room section in left field: "This new ballpark is outstanding, and I'm glad it finally was built. The whole process nearly killed me back in 2007, you know. The only thing that would make this day better is if Halle Berry was sitting right next to me."

And there you go. Halle Berry. You heard the quote here first, three years before it will occur. Actually, all joking aside, I am quite proud of my wife for her efforts in planning THE YARN HARLOT event and had no doubts that it would go off without a hitch. She is definitely "the brains" of the family, and I think she has a future in Marketing or Events Coordination if she so chooses. Super job Maura!

Peace,

Jeff