So last Thursday evening we flew out to Salt Lake City, purportedly to visit Rudi’s mother for a long weekend.

I admit, that while visiting my mother-not-in-law is as good a reason as any to visit Utah, I had a secondary motive — the Yarn Harlot was coming to speak.

Friday morning, we scampered out of bed and hurried down the street to the Black Sheep Wool Company, which was hosting the talk and book signing to pick up my ticket. Unfamiliar yarn! A sale! Overload! Overload! Danger, Will Robinson!

Luckily, because Jenny had accompanied us and kept marvelling at the price of yarn, I restricted my first round of purchasing (you can see this doesn’t bode well, can’t you?) to three different sizes of double-pointed needle holders. They aren’t fancy like the old-fashioned wooden ones that I’ve seen around, but they also only cost $2.50 apiece, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

We futzed around for a while, went out to lunch, and went to The Rack where I bought fancy hipster Italian shoes and a pink courderoy jacket. (Yes, Erik, I know you briefly had hope for me when you read that first part.)

Rudi dropped his mom off at home for a rest and he and I headed over to the Salt Lake Roasting Company to sit out on their patio and drink hot beverages and split a cookie. Then he took me downtown to the Salt Lake Art Center, where because you legally are required to carry an orange flag with you when you walk in a crosswalk, I did a rhythmnic gymnastics routine while crossing the street. Knitters laughed and congratulated me on my fine performance before we all headed inside to get a good seat.

I sat down alone on the side aisle, suddenly shy admidst dozens and dozens of knitters who all seemed to know one another. I pulled out a skein of yarn and started winding it to keep my hands busy and to seem occupied in case no one came up to me. Please let someone else come in alone and ask if these seats are taken, I thought. A couple walked in, asked if they could sit down, and scooted past me. Alone, I thought, alone!

Two knitters took the seats behind me. I believe they were mother and daughter. The mother had sparkly shoes.

Finished winding the ball of yarn, I cast on for a second sock (which would require less attention than the lace one I had been working on earlier this month). First needle, fine. Second needle? I managed to fling it across the aisle so it landed at the feet of another knitter. She picked it up, gave me a look, and handed it back. I hoped the auditorium would swallow me then and there and put me out of my misery.

“I didn’t see anything,” laughed the mother behind me. “Nope, nothing.”

I laughed. We chatted briefly and continued with our knitting.

Enter Stephanie (a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot). The first thing you should know is that she is not that much older than my friends or I. She has three teenaged daughters. Suddenly, I felt very old. And simultaneously very young.

The second thing to know is that she is just as funny in person as she is in her writing. Because 75% (I’m totally guessing) of us knew her from her blog, we knew that we should immediately expect to be photographed with the sock. We were. She laughed and said she does it to prove to her mother that she really can make a living this way and that people really do come to hear her talk.

First she instructed us in how to identify other knitters. One of the ways included walking up to random strangers and asking, “Straight … or … circular?”

Then she told us about making small talk at cocktail parties: “Who are you wearing?”

She regaled us with stories of coming up with the idea to launch the Knitting Olympics. She posted the idea on her blog and returned an hour later to more than 1,000 emails from knitters signing up. She said she sobbed for several weeks as she entered all our data into a spreadsheet. She apologized for making any of us cry.

She warned us that life is not all ice cream and chocolate when you become the world’s most famous knitting humorist, particularly when being interviewed by clueless (often male) radio hosts with questionable taste in jokes. (She also shared her own rebuttal joke for those circumstances.)

And then, too soon, she was done.

I tromped downstairs to the gallery to check out the fiber arts exhibit, called my brother, and moseyed up to the shop. Then I loitered downstairs for several minutes, hoping to let the crowds die down before I went in to join the line.

(This was a mistake. I forgot that I had obligations to anyone but myself. I forgot that Rudi’s mother is not used to eating dinner at 10 or 11 p.m. like Rudi and I are. I forgot they wouldn’t just head out to eat and leave me to forage for myself. I would like to say that I would not make the same mistake again. … I suspect that if I did say that that it would be a lie.)

I walked upstairs and the line was still hugely long. So I wandered through the shop. Since I was going to have to make my way to the checkout counter, I reckoned, maybe I ought to just take a look at a few things I saw this afternoon.

I bought a pattern for a cabled hat that Rudi’s mother tried on and liked. She had laughingly told me I should knit it for her. When I readily agreed, she recanted, saying, “Oh, no. That’s too hard for you.”

I’m sure this was intended kindly. That what she really meant was, “Oh, no. I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty so that you feel you have to make it for me. I was just admiring the way it looks on me and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.”

Unfortunately, what I heard was just what she said. And I dislike people telling me that things are too hard for me. (I am, however, perfectly content to say it of myself.) So I bought the pattern and some yarn to make it with. (I looked at the pattern the next morning. In the instructions it starts out by saying that it is geared toward experienced cable knitters comfortable with reading charts. I am neither of those things. I am, however, stubborn, and will learn.)

I paid for my purchases and joined the back of the line. I worked on my sock and chatted with some other knitters who welcomed me to Salt Lake. As we eventually inched forward, I understood why the line was still so long.

Because we all read Stephanie’s blog, we all feel we know her (at least a little). And half the knitters there wanted to show her things they’d knitted or were in the middle of. They brought their own socks to meet hers.

By the time I reached the table, I knew Rudi and Jenny were waiting and I was tired and hungry and ready to head home and thought Stephanie looked the same way. She signed my books and thanked me for coming. I thanked her for being so generous as to stay through the last knitters, even though it was 10 p.m. And then I went on my way.

On Saturday, Rudi, Jenny, and I went to a local street festival. I bought more things: goblets (made out of recycled wine bottles and etched with wintery pine trees), creme brulêe ramekins, pineapple-pear-cherry jam, and a diaper changing cloth for a pregnant friend who is due in November.

Rudi and I scooted off later in the afternoon to let Jenny rest. We stopped at two other yarn shops. One had a nice selection of sock and angora yarns, but a snooty owner who couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that I had, in fact, knit socks before. She even tried to explain to me what superwash merino was. It is possible that I was a little wound up at that point and over-reacted to what could have been well-intentioned and kind advice to someone she considered to be a novice knitter. But I was not inclined to take her that way, and we left without buying any yarn. Two doors down was another store, but they didn’t have anything that needed to come home with me.

Sunday afternoon, Rudi and I headed out, at Jenny’s urging, to brunch. We ended up at a restaurant across the street from the Black Sheep. So, of course, after brunch, we had to go back over there and buy a few more things: some fingering weight superwash merino to make my cousin’s impending freshly arrived baby a hat (he was born club-footed, so socks would be inappropriate), some orange alpaca to make myself mittens to match my orange coat, and some sock yarn infused with aloe vera and jojoba oil that is supposed to soothe your feet while you wear your handmade socks.

So that’s pretty much it.

I made good progress on two socks — the lace sock made it to the foot before we headed home and the sock I cast on during Stephanie’s talk was left at the heel flap. (The lace sock has since been finished. I’ll try to post a picture this week.)

Jenny sent me home with a few skeins of random yarn from her stash and a skein-winder, as well as a garbage bag filled with wool she bought at an estate sale. I left behind another half bag of wool in colors I thought she would use as well as the full bag of 70s-era acrylic. (Thanks, Stephanie, by the way, for the information that acrylic is not flame-retardant. It provided a legitimate reason for me not to take it with me.)

It was definitely a yarn-filled trip.