My Hero

To many knitters out there, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a Goddess among us. She has this way with wool and words that boggles the mind and is my personal hero. When I was ashamed to knit in public for fear of ridicule I just thought; WWSPMD and decided that I didn't care what judgmental non-knitters thought (unless of course they were thinking that my knitting was awe-inspiring and that they wanted to be just like me).
Now for those of you who have no idea who she is, for God's sake, Google. She has a blog at www.yarnharlot.ca that will have you in stitches (pun totally intended). She also has a litany of books out there that are magnificent. I know I sound like a pusher right now, but she's awesome, Google her right now. I'll wait...
The point of all this background is to tell you a sad, sad story. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is my hero. I've been reading her for about a year now and I check her blog almost religiously, which is why I'm even more ashamed that this happened.
I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon; a nice big city that Boyfriend and I refer to lovingly as "The Hipster Mecca". I now go to college in a city called Eugene. It's about a hundred miles away from P-town and is a seemingly endless city of hippies (not an insult, I promise). I go back to the Portland-metro area every few weekends to visit my family and raid my mom's pantry for canned goods (the life of an unemployed college student).
Now one weekend back in the summer I was sitting at my mom's computer checking Yarn Harlot and I came across the name of a knitting event that SPM had been mentioning for months. "Sock Summit". I had seen it before but not paying attention and thinking the event would be too far away for me to visit, I never checked it out. I was envious for those who lived near the venue though as it was shaping up to be the biggest sock knitting event in all of history. Something was gnawing on the edge of my brain though and I couldn't figure it out. The name sounded so awfully familiar but I just couldn't place it.
Later that week, I was back in Eugene and making dinner one night and Connor asked me if I would pour him a glass of wine to have with his. That's when it hit me like a sucker punch to the temple.
Now a few months before all of this, Boyfriend and I had gone to a wine/beer tasting event with Connor's brother Cassian and his then-fiancee (now wife) Heather at the Portland Expo Center. There are always banners around the PEC about the next shows that are coming through and I distinctly remember Boyfriend saying to me at one point: "Hey, 'Sock Summit', that sounds right up your alley." But I was distracted by all the colorful wines and displays that I just filed it away under "Google later". I never did.
Fast forward. I raced to my laptop praying that either it wasn't the same Sock Summit or that I hadn't yet missed it. It was. I had. Arguably the biggest Knitting event in all of Oregon's history was in my own back yard and I missed it because I was too lazy to Google. Many swearwords were said that night. I shall forever curse myself as I had the chance to meet my idol and be (if only for a weekend) surrounded by people just like me. I now immediately look-up every knitting event that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee names in her blog. Never again.