Meet me in Swarthmore, PA!

Save the date: on Sunday, May 17th, I'll be doing a booksigning at Finely A Knitting Party, in Swarthmore, from 1 to 3 p.m. The owner, Cathy, is full of energy and enthusiasm and promises lots of fun! She also has a lovely shop in charming downtown Swarthmore, so please stop by and say hello if you can.

And speaking of Swarthmore, my friend Laura (not Knit-So-Fine Laura, this is a different Laura), who lives in Swarthmore, turned me on to a great blog, called The Well-Read Hostess. I am still cracking up over this post.

Hear me, see me, meet me

I've been slacking off lately, eh?

Well, since last I blogged, I had the pleasure of podcasting with Kathy Elkins, the WEBS lady, who I dearly, dearly love (as well as her foxy husband Steve) and the show will go out Saturday morning; you can download it for free from I-Tunes, too.

I am pleased to report that I will be in Chicago next weekend (yes, I know it's TNNA in San Diego, but I'm skipping this TNNA so I can afford to go to the June one) celebrating the Inauguration a bit prematurely with my darling Franklin and also the Knitters for Obama group from Ravelry. If you live in the Chicago area, please come and meet me and get your books signed at Loopy Yarns:

• Friday, January 16th, from 6 to 8 p.m.

• Saturday, January 7th, from 1 to 3 p.m.

And the week after that, I'll be signing books at Loop in Philadelphia, on Sunday, January 25th, from 1 to 4 p.m. I'm hoping Jody Pirrello will be there, too, since she designed the kick-ass Chevvy socks that are on the cover of KSWHY.

I promise I'll post some real posts soon...

A couple more links

Our week of handpainted sock joy comes to an end, with two more posts about KSWHY:

• our hat trick designer, Kristi Schueler, tells us about her third (3rd!) design in the book, the extremely cool Spread Spectrum socks;
• Barb Brown has a special interview with me (Barb, I'd happily come to see you if I didn't hate airplanes like poison).

More designer links -- and a post on Knitting Daily!

For some more behind-the-scenes information from the designers, visit:

• Laura Nelkin, as she talks about her beaded Whirlpool Socks;
• Kristi Schueler's blog, to hear more about the Austen-esque Longbourn socks;
• Deb Barnhill tells us about her lovely Potpourri Socks on her blog.

If you aren't totally sick of me by now, you can check out my post on today's Knitting Daily. (A huge thanks to Sandi Wiseheart, for allowing me to guest post!) (Also, I do know that there is a typo in the first sentence and it should say "twelve" rather than "ten." We're working on it.)

And I'm thrilled to report that as of this writing, Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn is Number One on Amazon.com's Knitting Books AND Needlework Books lists!

Dancing socks & designer insights...

If you missed yesterday's Knitting Daily, then perhaps you did not see the clever dancing sock video, featuring many of the lovely designs from Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn. Go here and you can see it in higher resolution by selecting "Watch in high quality" which is under the lower right-hand corner of the frame. (Try to imagine the theme song from "Footloose" playing in the background -- sadly, intellectual property issues precluded us from using the original.) Rest assured that no socks were harmed during the making of this video.

If you'd like to see and hear more about some of the individual sock patterns, all this week the designers will be blogging about them. So far, you can visit:

• Kristi Schueler, as she discusses her Herringbone Rib socks (the ones that were featured in the latest Interweave Knits), here -- and for a special bit of fun, read the test knitter's reactions on her blog here;
  
• Mindy Soucek tells us what it's like to see your first pattern in a book here;
• Jody Pirrello describes her Chevvy cover sock design in her blog with some terrific photos and even possible modifications;
  
• Deb Barnhill does a quick interview with me on her blog, and I'm hoping will tell us about her Potpourri socks later this week;
• visit Barb Brown, of Wild Geese Fibres, where she tells us about her Rib Fantastic socks; and
• take a look at an earlier version of Elizabeth Ravenwood's Braided Gems socks.

There will be more designer insights coming up later in the week, so stay tuned -- it's going to be Handpaintapalooza this week. . .