Fiber Dreams

I drove over to Kristie’s house on Saturday morning. I was so excited about seeing the Yarn Harlot that day that I completely forgot to take my new yarn and my finished shawl for her to see. What a dunce. I did remember to get her blocking wires back to her. That’s something, anyway. I got to see her newly finished socks, and a couple new sweater starts. She’s having a time with her black cashmere yarn splitting, but the sweater is coming along well anyway, and it’s so soft and lovely. It’ll be worth the effort when it’s done. I just know it.

We jumped into the car, and followed the directions up to Los Angeles. Gads. I have no idea why the directions had us drive ten miles down Imperial. That was ten slow miles of surface streets, people. Sllloooooow miles. When we finally made it all the way to the 5 freeway, it felt like the next ten-mile leg of our journey was even slower. Stop and go traffic. At that hour on a Saturday. Gads. Where were all those people going? (Turns out there was a house stuck under an overpass, had been there since about 9 am, and that was the ultimate cause of all our traffic woes.)

Next up: the 101 for a few miles. This is where I got confused, and had Kristie get off the freeway. Too soon. We figured out that we shouldn’t have done that and managed to get back on without too much fuss. Then we got off again where we shouldn’t have. Or was that still the first time? You know, we ended up driving in so many circles it got quite confusing, in spite of the fact that Kristie was on the phone with her husband, who knows that area well. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the dubious honor of driving around downtown Los Angeles. Do anything you can to avoid it. Between the streets and the lack of good signs telling you where to go, it’s horrible. Anyway, we finally figured out that we weren’t where we were supposed to be, and got back on the freeway. Look! There’s our off ramp. Yes, the one we thought we’d passed when we were messing around on the city streets. Joy. It’s one that splits several times. Oh, and that split we just passed? That was the one we needed. Gads. This whole thing would have been a lot easier if we’d had a map with a picture of the entire area, you know, with street names and stuff. Like a Thomas Guide or something. Alas, we just had the small maps that Kristie and I had printed off the Internet with directions. That’ll learn us.

Kristie exited at the next opportunity, and it took us a while to figure out how to get back to where we were supposed to be, which turned out to be really close to where we’d been before we got back on the freeway. If only we’d known. We found a parking lot and parked. We were both quite relieved at that point just to be at the right place with time left to eat lunch.

Enter another mini-fiasco. We forgot to bring the map along that had the location of all those restaurants in the area. We took off on foot in search of a place to eat, and, naturally, went the wrong direction first. Who knew? We finally got ourselves turned around, and back in front of the library. We noodled it through, and figured out that most of the restaurants that sounded good had been in a group on the map. Must all be in the same building, right? Well, look-y there. There’s the Bonaventure Hotel, kitty-corner from where we’re standing. I’ll bet that’s where we want to go. Sure enough. The place that originally sounded best to both of us was the Bonaventure Brewing Company—if we’d just remembered the name of the brewery we would have saved fifteen minutes of pointless walking. Maybe. The Bonaventure is huge. And it’s circular. All the pathways are raised, and run along the perimeter of the building in a pleasing-to-look-at arc that takes forever to walk around. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if there hadn’t been all that traffic, if we hadn’t gotten lost… We finally located the brewery. It was naturally on the other end of the circle from where we started. And it was closed. Doesn’t open on Saturdays until 5:30. Gads. Back around the circle where all the little cafes and things were, we found a little place that looked good. We each got a half a sandwich and a smoothie for lunch. It was tasty. Not quite the beer and pub-grub we’d had our hearts set on, but good all the same. And it was fast.

We finally make it to the library, fed, happy, and excited. But how do we hook up with the folks who are supposed to get us in to see the Harlot? Turns out that Kristie and Lynda hadn’t exchanged descriptions or anything, but she did have Lynda’s cell number. So while I walked up and down the line asking everyone if they were Lynda, she tried—and succeeded after several attempts—to get Lynda on the phone. They had just arrived—Lynda, Anita, Alyson, and Alyson’s daughter M—and were walking through the library as we spoke. You really should go see Lynda’s blog post about Saturday. She has some great pictures of the library, as well as one of the group of us sitting in our seats, waiting for Stephanie to come out. Friends finally found, we waited in an exciting line to file into the auditorium.

We didn’t have to wait long before we were able to get in and find our seats. There were a couple speakers, some quick announcements about the library, then Stephanie came out to talk to us.

Oh my god. I knew she’d be funny. Her blog has me rolling on the floor sometimes. But I didn’t know she’d be that funny. She was delightful. More than once I had tears streaming down my face because I was laughing so hard. She had wonderful stories to share with us, anecdotes, a fabulous miscellany of knitterly things. Her comedic timing was incredible. She had us wrapped from the moment she came out on stage and took pictures of her sock in front of the audience. She talked for about 1-1/2 hours, then opened up to a little Q&A. During the first part, she had her notes on the podium, and referred to them as needed… but afterwards, during the Q&A part, she knitted away on her sock. Kristie was the first to notice it. I wish I could zoom in better so you could really see it, but she is knitting in my second picture of her.

The library personnel were in a hurry for some reason, so that portion of the afternoon was fairly short. Afterwards we all filed through the single narrow doorway out to the area that was set up for her to sign books. Kristie and I ended up rather near the end of the line, so it probably took about an hour for us to get up to where we could even see Stephanie. In some ways, once we could actually see her, the line seemed to move more slowly. I’m sure it was just the expectation that made time move at a snail’s pace.

We finally made it, though. Stephanie was just as charming and sweet as I knew she must be. I mean. She’s a knitter, after all. Dave reminded me the night before to take copies of my patterns to give to her, so I was prepared. Kristie took these next two wonderful shots. In the first one I’m showing the two patterns to her. Evidently she has a firm rule. Anyone who gives her a pattern must sign it. She got a pen into my hand, and made me do it. After all, she said, I’m a writer, too. She has a large collection of signed patterns at home. She also said that she thinks her daughter will love the blanket pattern. I guess she’s planning on knitting the world’s largest blanket, and is combining all sorts of patterns together to make it. Isn’t that great?

In this picture I’m signing the patterns. Stephanie’s laughing at me. It was great. She can sign and talk at the same time. It must be all that experi­ence. I was singularly unable to do that, so she kept having to remind me to sign the patterns.

Again the library personnel were in a hurry to get us out of there, so we didn’t get to chat as much as I would have liked. If you look at the desk, you’ll see my camera sitting there. See it? Yeah. You’d think that I would have used it to take a picture of Kristie and Stephanie talking. But no. Bad friend. Bad blogger. They were rushing us so much that I forgot. Can you believe it? I’m a horrible friend. Honestly. How could I? Gads. Stephanie did get a picture of Kristie, though, because Kristie made her a washcloth for her collection with the image of the State of California on it. She loved it, too. See what a dolt I am? Honestly. There’s no accounting for some people.

After all this you’d think that our adventures were over for the day. Not so. What happened next could have been prevented if either of us had thought to print directions for the return trip. Or if we had a large map of the whole area. Since neither was the case, you guessed it, we got lost again.

We were lucky in that getting onto the 110 to go home was easy. There was a ramp at the end of the street we parked on. We just drive onto the freeway and head south. Right? Wrong. Well, that’s what we did. We headed south. Turns out, we should have taken the 110 north to the 101 from there. Who knew? So there we are, going south on the 110, and it didn’t take long at all before we realized that we were going the right way. Now the simple thing at that point would have been to get off the freeway, turn around, and get back on going the opposite direction. It would have been, but the 110 north was a veritable parking lot. We so didn’t want to get in the middle of a lot of traffic again. We just wanted to go home.

I got Dave on the phone and he found the right spot on the map, then proceeded to confuse me with a half dozen different freeways that we could take, some of which were farther south than we wanted to go. Part way through this conversation Kristie got off the freeway, and found a parking lot where we could just sit and noodle this thing through. Kristie got her husband on the phone, and at about the same time both men decided that our best course of action was to get back on the 110 south and take it to the 91. Okay. We can do that. We both hung up.

We made our way to the lot’s exit to find that the street we thought we wanted was a one-way. The wrong way. Gads. It turned out not to be too tough, though. We made a big circle, and came at our onramp from the other side. Back on the freeway. It seemed that only a few minutes later we were on the 91, and in the home stretch. We sincerely wondered why on earth the online mapping systems we both used didn’t tell us about this way in the first place. It was so much easier than trying to figure out all those silly interchanges that we used on the way up. Sigh. We discussed the benefits of a “maps for women” website, where the routes may be a little longer, but they were easier to navigate. From here on out the trip home was familiar and easy to navigate. Thank goodness.

In spite of all the traffic and getting lost repeatedly, we had a marvelous time. It was a wonderful adventure, and we so enjoyed finally getting to see, listen to, and meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. All the headaches were worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But next time we’re taking the 91 to the 110, and skipping all those other roads.

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