Tag Archives: bookstores

Yarn Techie

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You know the saying, “Use your friends wisely?” I have this friend, Chelsie…

Jack and I were proud of building a Facebook page for our bookshop. We felt social media-accomplished, slick even, when we added news about my forthcoming book on independent bookstores. But when St. Martin’s Press started saying things like “you need a Twitter presence” and “what about hits from YouTube,” a sinking feeling formed in our guts.

I’d never tweeted anyone in my life; I was raised in a respectable, Southern family.

Enter Chelsie. Twentyish with a Master’s Degree in something to do with computers, she has luminous dark eyes as big as the Earth, and a dancer’s body. Men breathe hard when Chelsie wafts into a room. Plus she’s really, really smart.

Chelsie likes fashion, and cats, and anything to do with computers.

I like cats….

Chelsie offered to help – or maybe I coerced her; it’s all a bit hazy – and soon I was tweeting away, presided over a newly revamped blog, and had an Author page on Facebook connected to Goodreads, Pinterest, Youtube, Flickr and a bunch of other stuff I’d never heard of. When I inherited an iPad, she married it to my laptop with a few flicks of her long red fingernails across the keyboard.

The coolest thing about Chelsie is that she gives instruction tailored to my needs: “OK, here’s the ‘on’ switch,” is her standard opening line.

In appreciation, we try to return favors. See, Jack and I are totally the people you want to know when the apocalypse hits; we can make shoes and furniture, plus Jack is a wonderful singer, so we’re good face-to-face company.

But in a world hurtling through techspace at the speed of human thumbs on a keypad,  our skills are old-fashioned. Our tech queen is a thoroughly modern Chelsie, capable of bringing down a developing nation’s government with her blackberry if she chose. I am VERY glad Chelsie is on our side instead of Amazon’s; she could get anything she wanted online in five seconds or less, but supports local shopping–and independent bookstores in particular.

So Jack made her Indian curry, we sent tomatoes from the garden, and finally, inspired by hot pink yarn found in my stash (how did THAT get in there?!) I made her one of those all-the-rage curly scarves.

Jack photographed it modeled by Val-kyttie, bookshop manager. Chelsie tweeted a pic of herself in the scarf, but I don’t know how to get it off Instagram. (One step at a time….)


 (This was made from eyeballing one a friend brought to the shop’s Needlework Night. Chain 150 LOOSELY with an I hook using standard weight yarn; turn, chain 4, dc in fourth ch from hook, [dc, ch 1] 4 times in same ch, then [dc, ch 1] 5 times in each chain across; turn, chain 4, [dc, ch 1] in each dc across; do not turn, sc in each stitch around for a nice finished edge.)

“Of Course You Are”

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As it is sometimes wont to do, our phone died at the bookshop. We jiggled some wires and then called The Phone Company. They dispatched someone. He arrived 37 hours after they promised he would.

A nice guy, “Steve” smiled at us, jiggled something, went outside, came back and jiggled something again, then said, “Fixed.”

And it was. Steve asked to wash his hands (whatever he’d jiggled was dusty) and be pointed to Peter Straub.

“You like horror?” asked my husband, leading him through the maze that used to be our kitchen, and is now an intricate system of one-way tunnels walled by books.

“I am the author of a horror novel,” said Steve, hauling a card from his shirt pocket and handing it to Jack. “Self-published my first this month! It’s 99 cents on Amazon this weekend if you download it to Kindle.” He then bought four Straubs.

So now we have several spaces in our horror shelf inventory, someone to lead this October’s adult scary stories night, and a phone that works. Hey ho, just another day in the bookshop.

Don’t forget to enter Caption Contest V! You can see the picture by scrolling down to yesterday’s blog; leave your caption entry under “Comments.” First prize is a free copy of ‘The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap.’