Wednesday Night Meet and Greet

Loopy Yarns in Chicago hosted a book signing, trunk show, and party for Amy Singer, author of the book No Sheep for You and editor of knitty.com on April 4, 2007. I got on the 4:46 PM South Shore train and got to Chicago just past 5:30 PM. I got my copy of the book and chatted with Amy while she signed it. I asked if she'd ever heard of Get Stitchy! - an online stitching group to which I belong. She hadn't, but said she'd try to check it out later. A couple of threads in the forums are rife with references to patterns at Knitty like Branching Out, Calorimetry, and the ever-popular Clapotis.

As I walked up to the store, I wondered how many people would be there. Loopy Yarns is a small, cozy shop filled with an impressive array of yarns and fibers. Since I got there a little past 5:30 PM, the party was just getting started. I fondled some yarn. That Malabrigo stuff is nice. I then got in line and picked up a copy of No Sheep for You for Amy to sign. She sure is one friendly lady. Clutching my newly-autographed book, I made my way to the area behind the table Amy was sitting at to check out the snacks.

Nice spread! There was a table covered with cheeses, crackers, hummus, wedges of pita bread, mini spinach quiches, mini broccoli quiches, grapes, potato chips, chocolate cupcakes, muffins, and a couple of other items that I can't remember at this particular moment. I helped myself to one each of the mini quiches, a wedge of pita bread with hummus, and some potato chips. Next to the needles, hooks, stitch markers, etc. was a table set up with regular pop, diet pop, wine, cups, and bags of ice.

There was a photographer roaming around the premises capturing all the happenings. I imagine some of the pictures will end up on the Loopy blog. While I was checking out the yarn made from corn, Amaizing, the photographer walked up to me and pointed to my bag. It's the loteria messenger bag I bought from cafepress.com. She told me that Amy Singer did the artwork for the bag and that her husband (the guy sitting on the couch by the snack table) was the hand model for it. I immediately went back to Amy and her husband (didn't catch his name) and asked them to autograph the bag. Here are the pictures.



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At the end of the whole visit, I ended up getting a set of 5" size 8 Brittany double pointed needles so I could finish the cable footies from the One Skein book and two balls of Tatiana cotton yarn in charcoal and midnight to make a washcloth for the Get Stitchy! April Showers -along. That was in addition to my book purchase. Here's the yarn, by the way.




I ended my visit to Chicago with dinner in a restaurant called The Thai Spoon. I haven't figured out if it's a play on the word teaspoon or typhoon. At any rate, I had the shrimp with glass noodles. Yum! I liked this place. It's on the corner of Wabash and Harrison.

It was a fun day. I think I'm going to try and make it more often to Loopy Yarns Friday night stitching get-togethers. I was there for it a couple of weeks ago and got some really pretty yarns for my future clapotis (the Lorna's Laces sportweight in Bittersweet), my branching out scarf ( the blue stuff - I forgot the kind of yarn) a felted bag (the Karaoke yarn); some just-for-fun on clearance sparkly stuff; and a set of Denise interchangeables. See?