Knit one, bitch two
On Saturday, leorathesane and I betook ourselves to the Mall of Death for the Craft Yarn Council of America's 2008 Knit-Out and Crochet Too mega-super-event. We took the train. That was very important, as there were 50,000 people at the event in '07 and more were expected this year.
The event started at 10:00. My watch said 10:04 when we walked into the building. The line stretched from Sears to Bloomingdales. Thousands of lemminglike women with pointy needles and curved hooks, standing in a line. Not a mob I wanted to tangle with.
Leora and I are used to sensibly-organized events the Living Green Expo at the fairgrounds and GLBT Pride in Loring Park. Several points of ingress, no set order for viewing displays, people going to the tables they're interested in and skipping the ones they're not. But apparently the organizers of the Knit-Out are not big on sense. People lined up dutifully and shuffled from exhibitor table to exhibitor table. Slowly. Very, very slowly. And if you wanted to look at the 4th exhibitor in but not the first 3, you were shit outta luck, because the kind of crafters who come to a megaevent at the Megamall can be megabitches.
Leora and I stood in line for half an hour and saw one table. We realized that standing around like sheepies was asinine, so we went to where they were teaching knitting and crocheting, and a lovely woman named Renee taught us the basics of knitting (though not casting on, which we spent much of Sunday trying to figure out). When we passed the line again, the women we'd been behind was passing the table 2 down from where we'd left them. That's right - we learned a new craft in less time than it took to view 2 tables. We left them to their line and went to watch demos.
The demos were excellent, if a bit unintelligible. There were 8 at any given time, crammed into 2 little roped-off circles. They'd been moved from the central Rotunda to the Sears court because of noise complaints. There was a talking mall directory directly behind one of the circles. So much for noise control. We saw a demo on loom knitting, one on a fabulous join-as-you-go technique that might ge me over my fear of granny squares, and one on free-form crochet. I call that one the highlight of the day.
After lunch, we snuck around to the end of the exhibitors' tables, where the publishers and the organizations were (the other end was the yarn manufacturers). There was no one there. Either 1) people didn't know there was another row of exhibitors, 2) the line was moving so slowly that it hadn't reached them yet, or 3) those groups were less likely to be giving away swag and were therefore less interesting. We tried to look at a couple of the yarn vendor booths, but no dice. Was it a scarcity fear? I'm sure the yarn-makers brought enough cheesy shawl and afghan patterns for everyone. Or did the people who slavishly stood in line for 3 hours want everyone else to suffer as much as they had? It's not our fault they're cattle. When a Lion Bran representative slapped Leora's hand, it was time to move on.
We were interested in the Fastest Knitter and Fastest Crocheter competition and headed to the introduction/time trials at 2:30 in the Rotunda. But when we sat down in 2 perfectly empty chairs, the woman behind Leora tapped her shoulder and said, "The woman who's sitting there just went to get lunch. So you can sit there for now, but when she comes back, you'll have to move." I blurted, "Seat saving! Oh my god, I'm in junior high!" We rushed to the transit hub, bought our glorious Go-To cards, and came home.
We'd talked about going back on Sunday. But who'd subject themselves to that level of shit 2 days in a row (without a lot of money or sex as incentive)? We went to Depth of Field instead and bought a lot of yarn that was a lot cooler than what most of the yarn reps had at the expo anyway. Then we came home and did what we do best: crocheted strange and beautiful things and had a blast doing it.
And if anybody says otherwise, I'll poke 'em in the eye with my L-hook. Apparently, that's what we crafters do.