Our mutual John Hancocks
Saturday September 29th 2007, 8:08 pm
Filed under: "Wrapped in Comfort",Friends,Knit

I brought my author’s advance copy from May with me to TKGA yesterday. When people asked me to sign their books, I said sure, and asked if they in turn would like to sign mine. They didn’t have to say anything in there if they didn’t want to, but I thought it would be cool if they did.

Most who did hadn’t really seen the inside of Wrapped in Comfort yet other than a brief glance-through at the booth, and the notes were nice ones along the lines of “looking forward to knitting the patterns.” A number of old friends poured love into their words as well. (Gracie Larsen, I am SO looking at you right now. I had great fun telling everybody this book was your fault.) I told everybody pick a page, any page, anywhere that suits you. Given that that copy was the one I received before I knew how my three years of work would do out there, it was a copy of hope and of holding my breath–which I imagine is about how the people buying it felt yesterday: that it would live up to what they hoped out of it, especially given that they were paying full sticker price there.

(Heh. I noticed a certain large discount online knitting-book seller was at backorder this morning…)

I told my son about it when I got home, and that I planned to take it to Stitches East, too, that that had been just too much fun. He went, “Mom! You’ll run out of space in there!” Well, then, cool. “But they’ll have to, like, write across the models’ noses!” In my dreams, hon. In my dreams.

It was about halfway through before I realized I’d probably picked up the idea from the copy that Martingale sent me that everybody there, from the CEO down to the shipping clerk, had signed for me. A way of honoring every person’s role as being essential. Go Martingale!

P.S. The cushion? It was a valve job. It had been left open. It’s fine.

P.P.S. The backdrop? An afghan made by members of my knitting group, square by square, as a congratulations on the book coming out. Knitters are such cool people.

Autographed copies

P.P.P.S. (Technical stuff alert): To the woman who asked me if you could use laceweight with my patterns, a question that had so many answers that it all came out garbled: I had just been in Gracie’s Lacey Knitters Guild booth, where they were calling Jaggerspun Zephyr fingering weight. Zephyr is, I’d say, a heavy laceweight. I’ve used yarn as fine as that on the larger patterns and it worked out to a lighter, different effect than my more-typical fingering weight shawls, but it looked and fit fine.


5 Comments so far
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What a fantastic idea – I think your son’s right! You’re going to run out of room!

Comment by Amanda 09.30.07 @ 5:04 am

That is SO COMPLETELY cool! How wonderful. 🙂 I hope to see that book one of these days soon!

Comment by Romi 09.30.07 @ 10:46 am

Aren’t TGKA conventions fun! I wish I could’ve been there–everyone’s so nice and having so much fun.

I really need to get to a knitting convention this next year. *sigh*

Comment by Carina 09.30.07 @ 1:24 pm

Glad to hear it was just the valve left open. What an irritation it would have been otherwise! I love the idea of collecting signatures. There’s a reason why people in high school want others to sign their yearbooks. It’s for the memories. duh. Funny what we can learn from yougsters. (man, I feel old) As for the cushion deflating and you not hearing it…I totally understand. Being that I wear 2 hearing aids and all, stuff like that happens to me all the time. Well, not the whoopie cushion on the wheelchair, but you know what I mean, I hope.

Comment by Carol 09.30.07 @ 1:32 pm

Man!! I wish I could sign. Glad it was just a valve.

Comment by Sonya 10.02.07 @ 8:11 pm



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