Meeting up

This past Sunday was the 1st Annual San Francisco Ravelry Meet-Up. It wasn't an officially sanctioned Ravelry function, but here's hoping that one of these days the Ravelry team will join us! It was a great little event (thanks to the fearless - and probably sleepless - organizers) at the Women's Building in SF, and on the same day as the Bay to Breakers race, a crazy anything-goes kind of event that turns into a giant street party. We were fairly nervous about getting through the traffic, but it turned out we needn't have been. It was no problem at all.

7 of us donned our Brandywines (my local group rocks!), piled into A's "Team Bus" and made the trek from Sonoma County to SF.

After finding an amazing parking place in the Mission District (half a block away - we used up our year's quota of parking karma!), we stopped at Delfina to have lunch.

The thought of this (instead of the Taquería we had originally discussed) made me seriously cranky (I am not at all a fan of pizza), but my dear Susan told me that I had never had pizza like this and she was absolutely right. It was delicious! I would have shown you pictures of our tasty meal, but it was gone too quickly!

After lunch, we stopped in at Bi-Rite, an amazing little store just filled full of little wonderful tidbits of good food. And just look at these flowers out front.

Isn't that lovely?

Little stores like this really make me miss living in SF.

Off we went to the Women's Building and almost the first person I saw was Jacquie sporting her incredibly gorgeous Bitterroot shawl. Seriously, you have to see the pictures of this on Ravelry; my photo does not do it justice at all.

She was collecting tickets for door prizes. More on this later.

Inside, this is the sight that greeted us, and we were maybe ten minutes late. There were knitters everywhere! It was fabulous. :)

I began wandering around and look who I saw! It's Betsy, wearing her lovely Brandywine! She's kindly letting Anzula borrow her shawl for a display at TNNA, so this shawl will be traveling soon!

Then I met the Stash and Burn Podcast gals and came to find out that Nicole works with an old and dear friend of mine. I had no idea - it's a very very small world! Nicole and Jenny gave away Brandywine patterns as part of one of their promotions. Thank you, ladies! It was great meeting you both!

I came back by to see how my home girls were doing, and then I was off again wandering about and talking with old and new friends.

Here's Síle of Knit-One-One. She is so stylish, warm and wonderful (plus her shortbread is amazing!). I just love her.

And I saw Robin again (I met her before at Knit-One-One)! She's test knitting for me and she has the most amazing spreadsheets EVER. Did you notice she's wearing a Muir scarf? So pretty!

She brought her test project, too. It's in Malabrigo sock and I wish I could have captured the gorgeous color play. You'll just have to imagine how incredibly beautiful it is!

I turned around from talking to Robin and who should I see but WonderMike. I adore Mike. Really. I'm trying to adopt him as my kids' uncle.

And then I saw Adrienne! Kristine wasn't feeling well :( but I got the full report from Adrienne and talked to both her and my friend J (whom I had not seen in quite awhile) for some time.

Look at what she has in her hat!

Then I was off hunting for shawls in the wild. Here's a Brandywine!

A Trieste - I love it made with sock yarn. Isn't that cool?!

And a lovely Bitterroot on Catarina, who I met at Stitches West. She had asked me if I thought the yarn she had just purchased would make a nice Bitterroot (Alpaca with a Twist) and I said absolutely! Well here it is!

Everywhere I turned, I saw people wearing shawls I designed. It was amazing to see what everyone had done with them! I felt so honored.

At about 3, we could hold out no longer and went off to Imagiknit.

OMG. I had never been there before (was afraid for my wallet).

It was incredible. And everyone was in a state of fiber-induced euphoria. The only imperfection? No Designs by Romi shawl pins!

I did succumb to one perfect skein of Malabrigo sock. In green. Even though I don't really need any more green sock yarn. In fact, I'm afraid my current stash of green sock yarn may warp the space-time continuum. But it was a chance I had to take. Because I couldn't leave it there. It needed to come home with me and become a lacy piece of lusciousness.

After Imagiknit, L insisted we go back to see if any of us had won door prizes. And I'm thrilled that she did. Because...um...I won 12 skeins of Koigu! 12. Skeins. Of. Koigu. from Article Pract. (Thank you for such a wonderful door prize!) They are all different gorgeous colors. I see two and three color shawls in my near future. I've just been staring at them. Aren't they lovely?

Then it was off to Tartine for a cup of coffee and a yummy dessert (I had chocolate pudding)...and home again. What a fabulous time! I am hoping for another meet-up next year.

Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful day!!!