Community

Funny that I've kind of dropped off the blogosphere lately. Work has been taking all of my energy and while posting a review on my other blog of a book I just finished for my non-fiction book group, I thought I'd pop in and see what I'd last posted about here. Knitting...That was my obsession for a month or so. I still love my knitting books, my yarn, my 3 hats I've knitted and 2 scarves and plan to knit a pair of fingerless gloves out of the Baby Alpaca Skein I bought, beautiful earth tones, but am not quite ready to pick it up again until after the holidays, can I say working retail during the holidays :( and yet :) when I get to have some time on the book floor talking books to customers instead of sitting behind my computer in the back office.
I mainly want to share this one story as it directly relates to knitting and the process of forming a community which is exactly what drives me and what I'm passionate about, connections and community....
I saw a book that was to be released in November back in September and it had a huge ball of yarn and knitting needles on the cover. The book is called Spinning Forward by an author named Terri DuLong out of Florida. Since I was deep into my knitting obsession at the time, I thought how fun it would be to have the author visit our store on a Wednesday night during our store's weekly knitting group night with a group of knitters named "Noble Knitters" that have been meeting on Wednesdays from 6-8 for over 5 years. I emailed the author and explained my newfound love of knitting and our group and that I would love for her to sign her book and speak in our store. She agreed and was excited and we corresponded via email until November. She even emailed to check on me after all of the flooding in Georgia, she said she'd seen it on the news and was worried about me.
After much planning, working with her publicist and marketing her event with all of the local yarn shops I could find, the date of her signing was quickly approaching. As I began to put the signage up and books on the display, I thought why not call the closest yarn shop, one I had recently visited on my wonderful day mentioned in the post previous to this, and see if they wanted to partner with me and decorate a window display with their yarn products etc. along with the book in order to create awareness of the event and awareness of their shop. The owners loved the idea and quickly came over to create a beautiful display with a basket of beautiful yarn, a handmade shawl by one of the ladies in the local Wednesday night knitting group, a spinning wheel and more, it was lovely. The only thing missing was a live knitter in the window for effect.
The night came and my marketing worked as we had over 50 people show up to support the event. Half of the cafe was full of knitters talking and showing off their projects. Some were part of the weekly group but a lot were either knitters that hadn't been in awhile or were there for the first time. It was great and when Terri DuLong showed up, they were all happy to listen to her talk and read while they knitted and afterwards they patiently waited in line as she signed books. Each knitter had plenty of time to talk and share her project with Terri so the signing took longer than usual and since the line was full of other knitters, they kept busy knitting while waiting and talking so nobody was impatient or in a hurry.
I received a gift from Terri in the mail last week, as much as I claim to not necessarily want "things" I must admit that I couldn't wait to get from the mailbox to my office to cut my box open and look inside.
There was a beautiful handmade Christmas Ornament with a picture of yarn and needles and Spinning Forward 2009 on it....with a card thanking me for a lovely event and how she can't wait to come back in the spring. I also received an email from the owners of Only Ewe and Cotton Too, the yarn shop that decorated the window display, saying how our store was so much more warm and cozy than the one closest to them. Both of those compliments made me feel grateful to be a part of the creation of this event and the opportunity to bring joy and delight to not only the Noble Knitters in the audience but to the author and the owners of the yarn shop. This is what I mean by connection and this is what I like best about my job.