The Yarn Harlot is coming! The Yarn Harlot is coming!

Breaking news! The Yarn Harlot is coming to the Borders at Wayside Commons in Burlington, Massachusetts! Spread the word!

Whew. If you're local, or willing to travel, mark your calendar for Thursday, July 12, and start your engines. I'm so excited. This doesn't get more convenient for me.

I stopped in there tonight to use a coupon or two (okay, two) on the verge of expiry (hate to waste), and in the process of browsing visited their 3-for-2 table. Last time I was in, I saw that they had the Yarn Harlot's first two books on that table, which I want to own and don't, but there actually wasn't one other book on that table that I wanted, so I didn't get them (everything happens for a reason). Tonight, I saw a book there that a friend had just recommended, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, which she's enjoying so much she doesn't want to finish, so I thought why not, since it's essentially free?

Which is why, when I checked out, the woman who rang up the sale (who's a knitter herself) saw Stephanie's books and told me that it had just been confirmed that she's coming, and to spread the word, so here I am, starting to spread it!

I'm not at all sorry I went to New York, though. I Represented. It Was Good. But this is pretty damn cool, too. And I can stay up late and drive home to my own bed and cats after. And if she needs anything local, I can help! Stephanie, you need anything? Let me know!

Ooh, I've got to tell my Stitch and Bitch group on Monday.

Anyway, other shopping and thinking about shopping. I need to buy an alarm clock this weekend. (Anticlimax, right? Such is life.) I don't know for sure when I bought this one, but not that long ago, within the last year or so. However, in that expressive Southern phrase*, "it don't do right," and we can't have that. I overslept this morning, I overslept Monday morning, I'm buying a new one, period. A different brand.

*By which I mean, it's an expression I first heard in the South. It's just so descriptive of certain things.

I'm a snooze-button hitter by habit, that's not the problem. Both these days, I never heard a thing, and my sleeping through it completely might possibly happen once, but not twice, no. Not when I checked the volume last night before I went to sleep to make sure the radio wasn't set too quietly, and it was fine. No, something's loose, or wiggly, or broken, or something. It just don't do right, and I'll buy another one.

Sony, maybe, they're still a good name in small electronics, aren't they? I don't want to spend a lot of money, but I want something I can rely on, with a dual alarm, and maybe a CD player too. Actually, I'd like a cassette player, but I think that's too 20th century for the market, they're going to offer me places to stick my MP3 player, and they don't listen when I tell them where to stick ... sigh. Anyway, I don't have an MP3 player, so I don't need a machine that knows what to do with one. It would be putting the cart before the horse. And where would I put a horse?

As for considering, I was browsing the new Knitpicks catalog, and found myself contemplating the KIPer* knitting bag set with an interested eye. If you haven't looked at it, it's a set of three project bags, small, medium, and large, and a purse, that clips to any of them, so you carry the project you're working on (whatever size it is) and your personal belongings, without looking quite so much like a bag lady as one sometimes does.

*KIP = Knit In Public

They're nice-looking bags, in the photo anyway, and I'm rather tempted. I wish I could see them in person, though, or that the website had more photos (worth a thousand words, after all), and especially of the insides. I'd like to see how well they're made, what they feel like, how much they would really hold. (I have trouble imagining from measurements, though I guess I could measure some bags I have to compare.) I think I'll websearch, or blog-search, this weekend and see if I can find people who bought them and talk about them how they like them. I do need to replace my worn-out "purse for if I need to pretend I'm a grown-up", and this might be a way to do it. Contemplate, ponder...