Lexington Revisited*

Saturday morning, Lisa, Tobie, Nicole and myself piled into Nicole's Explorer and headed south to the Bluegrass Festival of Books in Lexington, Kentucky. Why? To see the Yarn Harlot, of course.

We arrived at the Lexington Convention Center shortly after noon, which gave us time to do a little book browsing and find a bit of lunch before heading into the banquet room where Stephanie would be speaking at 2:00. We found our seats around 1:00, which meant we were right up front. The great thing about being in the banquet room was that we were able to sit at big tables, which provided a lot of room for all of our knitting gear.

The host for the event came up to me a little before 2:00 and told me I looked familiar, and thought maybe she'd seen me on "the website". I told her I'd been on the Yarn Harlot's blog before, but she said she thought I was on the festival's website. That was news to me, and Nicole and I laughed it off... Nicole had looked at the festival's website the night before and hadn't seen me, so we figured it must have been someone else. Not so! After we got home last night, Nicole sent me this link to the photos from last year's festival. If you look on the second page of photos, my picture is the first on the left in the middle row. Joy and Kimmie are there, too!

The talk was great. It was the same as in Pittsburgh, which was to be expected, but I still got goosebumps in all the appropriate places. This is, of course, the classic blog-the-bloggers shot.

Stephanie went back to the festival ballroom to sign books after the talk, and I went with Lisa to get a couple of books signed. I had to break all the rules and go around the table. She told us she was still free after the festival was over, that we shouldn't go anywhere.

Magpie Yarns, a yarn shop in Lexington, sponsored a "sit and knit" in the ballroom from 3-5, so we stayed and knitted for a while. The store also had a drawing for some gift certificates to their store. The first winner was a very sweet girl named Denise who had ridden a bus from Southeastern Georgia to be there. She had come over to talk to me before the first drawing to tell me that she recognized me from the internet, too, but she had seen me on this blog before. Hi Denise! Say hi in the comments if you get a chance.

A big hello to Penny and her sister Kathryn, as well. Penny and I got to knit together last year at the event, and we shared a table at this year's sit and knit, too.

A little later on, the name for the $50 gift certificate was drawn. You're never going to believe this. I know I didn't. Looks like I'll be headed back to Lexington again soon. Then I got to draw the name for the $100 winner, but it wasn't anybody in my group. That was disappointing, but I'm sure the winner will enjoy it anyway.

The convention center started shooing us out around 5:30, so we made plans to meet Steph outside her hotel to go to dinner. We ended up at Sawyer's Bar and Grille, right across the street from the convention center. Despite "table service" actually meaning "you can get that at the bar" and their significant lack of anything vegetarian on the menu, we still had a great time. We sat and talked for not quite two hours, with subjects ranging from health care to Canadian coins to knitting, with a number of other topics in between. Thanks, Steph. It was awesome to hang out and help you get your beer fix. :)

This picture is just for my mom... Stephanie is not the only one on Saturday who enjoyed the books about Knit Knack, the knitted turtle. They were a HIT! I can't wait for the next in the series... around July 4, maybe. Love you, Mom!

After dinner, we dropped Stephanie off at her hotel (How many blocks did we drive to end up across the street? I don't want to talk about it.) and headed to a different yarn shop. They had handed out coupons before the event that advertised they would be staying open until midnight, so we decided to stop by. ReBelle is a great little Bohemian shop that offers a lot of handpainted yarns, natural fibers, and recycled items. They had a lot of really neat things and we enjoyed browsing their yarn and patterns.

I picked up three skeins of Blue Sky Cotton in navy, orange, and chocolate. Yum, yum.

We piled back into the car around 8:45 to head back to Cincinnati. What a great day. Thanks again, Nicole, Tobie, and Lisa... it wouldn't have been the same without you!

*Click here for last year's Lexington trip.