Sunday, October 28, 2007

Crazy Aunt Purl, Meet Peoria. Peoria -- Crazy Aunt Purl.

When Laurie announced her fairly-short book tour, I was first excited/disappointed to see that she was going to Houston. If I still lived in San Antonio, it would be an easy 3-hour drive to go to Houston. Then I realized that she was also coming to Peoria -- less than three hours from Iowa City! Peoria is also only about an hour from Mom's, so I visited Mom for a couple days after my Albuquerque conference, and drove up to Peoria on Saturday.

Laurie was appearing at the Women's Lifestyle Show, which meant an admission charge and that many in the audience weren't knitters. I decided that the importance of representing knitters was worth the $8 admission charge, and I'm really glad I did.

Laurie sounds just like you'd expect her to -- she has a Southern accent, but also speaks really fast. After reading a few passages from her book, she took questions. She's still learning the book-tour business, and admitted that she was nervous, but she was just so cute! She didn't even roll her eyes when someone asked why her blog was called "Crazy Aunt Purl." She also said she wouldn't be writing a book about dating -- too depressing! Considering the number of people standing in line to buy books for her to sign afterwards, I think she must have enchanted even the non-knitters in the crowd. When she signed my book (pre-ordered from Amazon), she recognized my name as a sometime-commenter, which surprised me -- sometimes, having an unusual name is a good thing! She also stood up and hugged every single person in line, and took pictures with most of us. I think most of us wanted to take her home to our mom's house for dinner! Or maybe wine...

Where's my picture? Well, my camera's battery had almost died by then, and a single picture was taking WAAAY too long, so someone took one of us with Laurie's camera. I'll be watching her flickr site for it!

Next time: actual knitting content, with pictures!

ETA: She's quicker than me -- here's our picture!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

How very cool!!!

Anonymous said...

You both look great! It sounds like a whole lot of fun.

LOVE your hair color.

coastergirl said...

It looks like you went more red - it actually looks like my color now! Kit did it - with Clark coaching from across the room!!! Love it!

Bezzie said...

Cool!! Sounds like a fun time!

But you're the second Janna I know ;-)

AndreaLea said...

How exciting! That's such a cute picture.

Chris said...

I think that might be the first picture I've seen of you?! Looking good!

Anonymous said...

You both look cute! I could only make it to the Yarn Harlot signing this year-sigh. No more leave. I wanted to see Laurie, too. :(