Knit Local with The Loop on Humboldt, Cosponsor of Our Kyoko Mori Event on March 19th

I'm so excited about our event with Kyoko Mori on Friday, March 19th, at 7 PM. When I was at Winter Institute, I was speaking with Julia Cowlishaw, my old bookselling colleague who is now an Ingram rep, and she told me that she had recommended Yarn at a lot of her fall presentations.

Then on my trip to Brookline, I ran into PW correspondent Judith Rosen, while we were both visiting our mothers. (They live in the same building, and are very happy about the new chef in the dining hall. You really had to try the lamb!) I asked her what she was reading, and imagine if she didn't also pull out of her bag Kyoko Mori's memoir!

Our friends a The Loop are also excited about the event. I'm hoping that by copresenting, we can double (or almost double, as I'm sure we have some customers in common) the potential audience for this book that really incorporates knitting into the story, both in plot and theme. I love the way that Mori finds herself separated from her community, doing something solitary, and yet longs for the community to do that solitary activity in a group.

I visited Caitlin at the store on Humboldt (just next to the Alterra, north of Locust) and they let me take a few pictures to post. I asked about some of their nice fixtures, and got a good rec that I might find myself using. I asked if they had moved their fixtures from Bay View (which, yes, I had visited) but that store was half the size and utilized more wire fixturing than the friendly wood that's in their Riverwest location.

It's my feeling that just like people need to be taught the joys of an independent bookstore, they also need to know there are interesting, wonderful, community-oriented places to buy yarn, needles and patterns beyond Jo-Anne, Michael's, and Walmart. One of the saddest parts of Yarn is when Mori gets to Green Bay, only to see the knitting store go out of business. I think the other place that closed in the book in Milwaukee she referenced was the grand old Kovack's Fabric on Broadway. Sigh.

Just for the record, I did try to teach myself to knit with one of the kits we sold at Schwartz. In the end, I couldn't seem to get the hang of it.

While in Riverwest, I bought some toffee at Burke's. They were selling some at the Downer Sendiks, but I needed dark chocolate and they only carried milk. I'd been hearing about this place for years. It's just off Capitol.

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