Long lunch

Gina of Mad Love Knits was in Boston this week for a graphic artists convention. I met her —

and Judy of Mrs. Hammer’s House for lunch across the street from the convention center.

Judy was the first of my readers I ever met. I had gone to Circles, a yarn shop in Jamaica Plain, for a book signing by Stephanie. A woman at the door who seemed to be helping run the event said, “Oh, are you the guy who makes his own knitting needles?” That was Judy. If she was going to read me, of course I started looking at her blog. I saw her again the next September when I went over to Circles again, and then the next day when I went to the Boston Knit-Out on Boston Common (which I only knew about because they told me at Circles).

I’m not sure how I started reading Gina’s blog; probably from a link on Judy’s. Gina designed the adinkra bag that I made for Arlene this winter.

People who don’t have internet friends don’t appreciate the reality of internet friends — that is, that they really count as friends. When you’ve been reading about what someone’s been doing, what they think is important enough to talk about, what’s happening in their life, and they’re commenting on your blog about what you’re doing, you know them better than people you see often but never have a serious conversation with. So when Gina said she was coming to a conference in Boston and wanted to get together with Judy and me, I definitely wanted to be there.

It wasn’t a surprise, knowing how she writes, and seeing that big grin, but Gina is (or was that day) enthusiastic and bouncy, clapping her hands and saying, “Yay!” about things that are going well. If I weren’t an old married man I’d want to grab her hand and go skipping down the street with her.

Here are the three of us:

Gina had sent an email saying, “Here’s my cell phone number. Text me any time.” I had only sent one or two text messages ever before, just to see if they worked. I spent some quality time with my phone manual on Sunday and learned how to input upper-case letters and what the shortcuts are to get to the messages without all the levels of menu, just for the occasion. So we set it all up by text. I got to the restaurant about a minute before the appointed time, and Gina was already there. Basically, I got there, the waitress/hostess said, “Can we seat you for lunch?”, and I said, “I’m supposed to be meeting someone here — I think I just did!” because Gina was the only other customer there.

Arlene had a print in an art exhibit at the Hynes Auditorium, the convention center back across the street. She gave me good directions to find it. That’s hers on the left.