My WWKIP day weekend actually started on Friday night, when I participated in the yarn-tasting Knitty Roundtable Friday night at The Purple Purl and got to play with swatch, preview and appreciatively review several interesting new yarn offerings. I am now officially in love with three new yarns and will have to struggle to avoid a major acquisition splurge in the near future.

On Saturday afternoon I wandered downtown to Lettuce Knit for their WWKIP event. For those of you who have been living under a rock or something may not have heard: it was the Yarn Harlot’s birthday on Saturday, so she and Rachel H naturally conspired to hatch a fabulous plan whereby they arranged for teh fabulous Franklin to come up to Toronto for the weekend and take a few photos of the local knitterati and the hoi poloi for his 1000 Knitters Project.

I am now totally smitten with Franklin, who is (impossibly yet truly) even more charming, sweet and funny in person than he is on his blog. I got to knit a few rows on the community scarf (I threw in a little bit of K2P2 checkerboard for variety), and chatted with him for a few minutes as he snapped pictures of my sweaty and minimally clad self (it was another sweltering humid day here in The Big Smoke). My only regret was that the inimitable Dolores was nowhere to be seen, although given the steamy weather I expect she hauled her wooly self across to one of the local watering holes to wet her whistle and assault harrass grope flirt with some local hotties.

All in all, I have to say I’m lucky to live in Toronto - it seems to have become something of a world-wide knitters Mecca. Numerous folks made the pilgrimage converged on Toronto via plane, train and automobile from some far-flung reaches of the continent to participate in this happy event, and I am happy to say I made more than a few new friends, including sweet 5-yr-old Rachel (seen here on the plane home, already flashing the kryptonite-green nail polish I had to give her earlier that day because it matched the dress she was wearing when we met) and her equally sweet mom, blogless? Laura, both of whom will appear knitting om the incredible community scarf in the 1000 Knitters project.

Many thanks to the Yarn Harlot who has now joined the ranks of the fabulous 40s (Happy Birthday, Stephanie! Way to throw a best-ever-knitter's-birthday-bash!) and to the uber-organized Rachel H (stalwart "sidekick" and handler extraordinaire, unflappable wielder of the awesome clipboard-of-power) for arranging Franklin's trip and for working your arses off all day wrangling the throngs of knitters and keeping this ginormous photo-op running smoothly.

Today (Sunday) I was planning to complete the trifecta by dropping in to visit with one of my favourite people, Haley at Knitomatic . But to my dismay when I picked up my email last night I got the newsflash stating that as of this very weekend they are on summer hours, which means they'll be closed on Sundays and Mondays until the fall. :( Oh, boo! Way to mess with my WWKIP weekend agenda, H!

Still, all in all perhaps it's not such a bad thing that I am not out and about today. It's rather difficult to knit in a hailstorm. Yup - that's right. Hail. Today has already provided a lovely demonstration of the full range of fickle weather possibilities offered by a Toronto summer. And it's only 3 pm. I wouldn't be surprised to see tornadic twisters or maybe a sudden temperature drop with sleet before dark. Stranger things have been known.

P.S. Carol commented:
On the bright side, the weather isn't boring!
Please! Bore me for a while. So far this spring/summer has been a little too "interesting" for my taste. I was building an ark this afternoon (it seemed prudent), but the hail stones blew it to smithereens.