Celeb knitting pt. 2
Instead of answering Larry's comment in those little boxes, thought I'd devote another post to it.
I had an interesting experience at La Knitterie Parisienne. As most of you probably know, it's very celeb-oriented. Justine Bateman never even knit until she went into that shop a few years ago and now she's got her own line of hand knit items. Over the years, Edith Eig (the owner) has become a celebrity herself and has a large book with her press clippings in the store.
My mom was visiting and as she's an amazing knitter, I thought it would be fun for her to go to the most famous LYS in L.A. She actually wanted to make this Julia Roberts sweater for me ( I could care less about that), so we went to buy some yarn. It was on a Saturday and I was prepared for it to be crowded and for us not to get a lot of attention, but we went anyway.We get there and thankfully it's not busy. My mom shows the pattern to Edith, and they go through several types of yarns, before deciding on which one was the best. Then, as it was a striped sweater, they picked colors out together, getting my approval too, since I was going to be wearing it. Then Edith had my mom sit down at a big table and knit a gauge swatch. We chatted with some other women there (nope, nobody famous) and it was so much fun. While chatting, Edith and my mom discover they lived a few blocks from each other in Brooklyn years ago! After my mom gets home and starts working on the sweater, she discovers some problems with the pattern. I post to several lists and newsgroups, trying to get her help, but never quite get the right answer. My mom wrote to Edith about it and then one afternoon, Edith actually called her and went over the problem with her and solved it. I thought that was incredibly nice.
I also found this story about the shop, with photos, so you can see someone else's view, too.