A Night with the Harlot

Have y'all been following the Yarn Harlot's (a.k.a. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) book tour on her blog? Her last stop was last night in Portland at Powell's Books, and a whole flock of us from Salem went up to see her.

Now, for those of you who sometimes say, "Aw, I worked all day, I'm too tired to go to that thing tonight that tomorrow I'll probably wish I went to," listen up. Here's how my Fridays go this term: I teach two 2-hour back-to-back labs in the morning, followed by a noon meeting (which is where I scarf down lunch), followed by a 1-hour lecture, followed by a 2-hour lab. That's seven hours on my feet, a non-stop day with no breaks to sit by myself and decompress, and I'm an introvert so that's the definition of hell for me. So after all that, last night the lab got out a little early (thank Mendel). I jumped in the car, rocketed home, feed the cats, warmed up some stuff that I rummaged out of the fridge for dinner, and met my friend Katie with her little Ellie at the IKE Box where our knitting group meets. We bolted for Portland, got stuck in traffic so slow way south of Wilsonville that it looked like walking there would be a viable option, finally got out of slow traffic around the I-205 exit, and sailed into downtown Portland around 7:00 -- the talk was scheduled for 7:30. Katie was on the phone to Stephania (a.k.a. Three Fates Knitting) who was holding two seats for us. Thank Mendel again, there were parking spots open in a pay lot catty-corner from Powell's. We dashed in, claimed our seats, bought our books, found the ladies room, and sat down about 10 minutes before Stephanie Pearl-McPhee came on stage.

Then we laughed ourself silly for the next two hours.

I'm still grinning the next morning.

I got a blurry picture of Katie, Ellie, and Stephania:

Ellie was a little worried about the size of the crowd, but she settled in and was a pretty happy baby the whole time we were there.

The crowd was as big as the space that Powell's could provide:

I got one sorta-not-blurry photo of the Yarn Harlot giving her talk -- and yes, her Gwendolyn sweater was done! And she wore it! Jut not at that moment because with all those bodies packed into one space on the top floor, it was quite warm:

One of the perks of giving a young mom a ride is that moms with babies are among those who get to go to the front of the line at Stephanie's book signings. We both had spanking new copies of All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin, the newest book, in our hands. Katie gets her book signed, and I was next, but I didn't get a good shot of that.

Wow, a few weeks ago I saw Jane Goodall give a talk and got her autograph, too, though I don't have a picture of that either (they had one person doing all the picture-taking, and I don't see our picture posted in the pictures for that event). Jane Goodall AND the Yarn Harlot in the same month! I was equally thrilled to see both -- for different reasons, but thrilled all the same.