The Yarn Harlot

I just got back a little while ago from seeing Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee, aka The Yarn Harlot (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/). She is a delightful speaker and kept about 300 people laughing for over an hour. It was nice to be able to knit during a talk as the lights were left on in the auditorium making it easy to see my progress and others to read their incredibly complex patterns while still enjoying her talk.

One of her schticks is that the knitting community is not taken seriously by the rest of the business world. She related that Blue Moon Fibers (http://www.bluemoonfiberarts.com/) had approached a bank about helping with credit card orders for a monthly sock yarn club. When ordering opened the bank decided that it had to be a scam because thousands of people could not possibly want to order a monthly sock yarn club and refunded everyone's orders. I understand that litigation is still on-going.

Another story had to do with Stephanie's personal charity, Knitters Without Borders, which has raised over $300,000.00 for Doctors Without Borders. It took a couple of years for the group to meet its first goal of $120,000.00 after the Southeast Asian Tsunami. Stephanie then had another $120,000.00 goal announced on her blog and it took 72 hours to meet that goal. Now Doctors Wihtout Borders is asking her how to raise that much money.

In both cases knitters are shown to be a powerful economic force both in business and charity work even if the general community may not recognize this force. HOWEVER, we have met the enemy and it is us. To get respect you need to act like you already have it. Stephanie admits that she does not introduce herself as a writer of humor based on knitting. She has published five books, two of which have made the best seller lists and one of which has earned a prestigious award for humor writing. She introduces herself as a writer only and is unaware of how many books she has actually sold. I agree that with 50 million knitters in North America knitters can be a powerful force for good in the world but if one its most visible boosters is embarassed by her vocation its no wonder that the rest of the world is unaware of that power.