Sometimes inspiration comes in strange places. For a couple of years I had been thinking that I should put up a website for my art. After all, I’m the webmaster for:
- Three Rivers Artist Guild
- Watercolor Society of Oregon
- Mt. Pleasant Iris
- Greater Portland Iris Society
But I could never really decided what I wanted my website to be. I didn’t feel like I had enough “inventory” to really make a good show and I didn’t add new things often enough to make it interesting for any customers.
Then I came across Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot. As a knitter, it isn’t long before you hear about her. Her books are common discussion around knitting circles. But I wasn’t a blog reader, and didn’t give her blog too much thought.
Then one day it was slow at work and I took a gander. And it wasn’t long before I sat down to read her whole blog.
Stephanie write humor that is Incidentally about knitting; but really it’s about life: child rearing, the creative process, marriage, community, family, home improvement, writing, travel, and many other things.Over the course of her blog (10+ years) as well as her eight books she’s chronicled the important changes in her life… and also her knitting.
Reading her blog gave me inspiration to put up my website this year and attempt to start blogging. I’m still not sure if I have much to say, but I am finding the process enjoyable.
Tuesday Stephanie was in Portland to start the book tour of her new book: The Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes: Stories of Tidiness, Self-Esteem and Other Things I gave Up On
The crowd at the reading.
I had seen pictures of her events, so I got to Powell’s in good time. But by seven, the crowd looked like this –>
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee examines my first socks…
The talk was great. Stephanie rocked it, giving a short and funny introduction and then reading two her stories from her book.
Because I had arrived in good time, I got my turn to have Stephanie sign my book and I fulfilled a small dream. Stephanie like socks (famously); she also loves bad first socks. My first socks are epically bad. I wanted her to see, because everyone else tells me they are okay.
… and determines they ARE terrible!
She agreed they were terrible, and even put a photo of me and my bad first socks on her blog.
But her next question really made my day. “Were your next ones better?”
It will keep me going, reminding me that progress of any sort is worth documenting.