A Virtual Friend becomes a Real Live Friend or I Love the Internet

Last Saturday a giant group of Seattle-area knitters hopped on Amtrack to Portland for their annual Yarn Crawl.  This is such a boon to our fabulous local yarn stores during a traditionally slow month and it is a fun day for everyone involved.  I joined a big group of local knitters to welcome our kindred spirits to the Rose City.

My main agenda was meeting a new friend that I met through Ravelry after she “liked” a project of mine.  I got to know her via Twitter and found that we have a lot in common.  Weirdly, this includes things like having furnace troubles at about the same time.  I had asked her if she was hopping on the Knitting Train and she wasn’t aware that it was happening.  She bought a ticket and we had a fun day together.

One of the more interesting aspects of the information age is that it is possible to make friends without ever actually meeting them in person.  This can often be a mixed bag.  The trashy day time talk shows are full of people who met their “true love” online only to find themselves taken advantage of and hurt.  As with all relationships, common sense has to trump wishful thinking and fantasy.  Having followed this woman’s Twitter posts for almost a year I had a pretty good idea that she wasn’t a grifter set on bilking me out of stash and home.  Plus, we were meeting each other among about 200 women armed with pointy sticks.  I felt pretty good about the situation.

I had seen a picture of her from her profile and she knew I was going to have a cute 10 month old with me.  It took us a while to find each other in that sea of fabulous scarves, sweaters, hats, gloves, socks…..   Finally, she approached… “Are you Soupygirl?”  and we were off.   First to Dublin Bay.  As the closest LYS (knitterese for local yarn store) to the train station it was packed and hot!  They have some fabulous yarn there and they were very welcoming.  V (my new friend) found some good stuff and we headed off to the next spot.  Unfortunately, that’s where we discovered that she forgot to grab her purchase back at Dublin Bay (cut her some slack, she’s about 2 1/2 months pregnant—I couldn’t even remember how to read patterns at that point).  So we trekked back where she recovered her purchase and discovered that she had also lost a fabulous scarf knitted by a good friend.  Luckily someone had found it and reluctantly returned it (it was a great scarf).  Back out and a detour to Cupcake Jones for red velvet and peanut butter and jelly cupcakes taken to go.

We decided to head over to the East side to hit Twisted and Close Knit so we hopped in the car.  At that point H was needing a new diaper, lunch and a nap quality time with Daddy, so we dropped her off first.  Twisted was crowded but not oppressively so.  We grabbed some tea and hit the couch to eat our cupcakes.  I’ve got to say, yarn shopping with a sugar buzz is a good time.  You should try it.  I picked up some yarn for the Christmas stocking (very pretty Noro) and did some enabling/rationalizing/goading so V could feel better about buying more pretty yarn.

Over to Close Knit and Bolt.  I ended up buying a very cute pattern for knit poppies.  At this point it was 4 and we were crashing from our sugar buzz.  Where else could a self-respecting Portlandite take a guest but Burgerville?  We hit the one over by the Yarn Garden, you know,  just in case we had time to squeeze in another store.  Unfortunately, we maxed out and it was time to return her to the train station so she could head home.

This was such a fun day and it was great to meet a fellow mom and knitter.  This is the Internet at its best:  connecting with nice people who share common interests and growing a friendship.