The Harlot Cometh

We are less than 48 hours away from the event of the YEAR! The Yarn Harlot's return to Northampton and WEBS! I am so excited and so stressed about all of the details, I'm not sure which emotion I'm feeling at any given time.

Orchestrating an event of this size is no small feat and it involves not only a lot of planning, but an immense amount of teamwork and cooperation from all of you!

As of today, our pre-registration has officially gone over the estimated attendance at the book launch at FIT! Little ole’ Northampton will beat the largest metropolitan area in the United States! Now, I know this may not matter to Stephanie, she has much higher goals with her tour than simply numbers. But as I've said before, I am competitive - wicked competitive. Call it a fault, call it what you want. I was asked to deliver Knitters to Represent - I take my job and this particular assignment seriously (and a bit personally). As of this morning, we have 602 pre-registered attendees. I did the happy dance. Now to just make sure we don't end up with a mess of knitters on our hands!

So, here's the info you need to know, the links to find it, etc. Please take the time to read all of this. It will also be coming to those of you pre-registered via email tomorrow (if you opted to provide us with an email).

GENERAL LOGISTICS

The doors to the Calvin will officially open at 5:00 PM. For those of you coming from outside the area, we’ve posted information about directions, parking and local restaurants on our website. Here are the links to each one.

Directions to the Calvin

Parking in Downtown Northampton

Nearby Restaurants

GIVING BACK

We are supporting two charities with Stephanie’s visit that are very important to us, so we hope you will find time to support one or both of them while you are here. First is the Northampton Survival Center’s Kids’ Summer Food Program. This critical program feeds kids all summer long that ordinarily receive free breakfasts and lunches at school. When school is out, the Survival Center is their only food source. Let’s fill their coffers for the entire summer. The link below details the foods we would like folks to bring. Please bring them to the store, not to the Calvin as we won’t have the ability to collect food there.

Kids' Summer Food Program - Food List
Scroll down the page to see the list!

For those of you who have been working on hats for charity, please bring them to the store and we will make sure they are distributed. Please bring them to the store, not to the Calvin as we son't have the ability to collect hats there.

GOODIE BAGS

Everyone in attendance will receive a goodie bag with yarn donated by Webs and needles donated by Storey Publishing/Boye. During Stephanie's talk, we would like you to knit a square and those squares will be sent onto Warm Up America to be sewn into afghans and distributed to a variety of individuals who are in need.

THE BOOK SIGNING AT WEBS

Finally, as there are 600+ folks joining us, we are going to have a process for getting your books signed at the store. Stephanie will be pre-signing a group of books that will be available for purchase at the store if you don’t want to stand in line after the talk.

If you would like to meet Stephanie and get your book signed, we will be handing out cards at the Calvin with designated times for folks to come back to get their books signed. Cards will be handed out based on your time of arrival at the Calvin. The only exceptions are the elderly, handicapped, anyone with a small child or expecting – you get to go to the front of the line. This is Stephanie’s rule!

If your time is later, you may want to grab a quick bite to eat or an adult beverage at any one of the nearby establishments in downtown Northampton (caution: the bars near WEBS are a little scary!)

Of course, you are more than welcome to join us any time at the store for a little yarn shopping (there is some nice Regia sock yarn in the warehouse!), but we’d like to try to keep the line from snaking all around the warehouse. You are also welcome to just come back to the store, find a spot and hang out an knit!

The store will open at 10:00 AM on Wednesday. We'll be open during the entire event, including Stephanie's speech and we will not close until the last person leaves!

We will have plenty of staff in the store and at the Calvin to help you out. This is going to be a great night! I hope Northampton is ready for us!

Kathy

P.S. IT'S DONE! The catalog project that is standing in my way of every other project I want to do is done!!!