Mother's Day is Coming

We stood together on the wrong side of the Taj Mahal,
where we weren't supposed to be,
holding hands in the moonlight.
-Perri Klass and Sheila Solomon Klass

I am tempted to write a paean to my local independent bookstore. It is a wonderful, welcoming, cheerful place full of really good books. It has heart. It has soul. I can walk to it. It is across the street from a coffee shop and around the corner from a yarn store. They have comfy couches and they support Reach Out and Read.

But I will mostly spare you. Instead, I'll tell you about last night's exciting reading and book signing by the mother-daughter author team of Perri Klass, pediatrician, author, knitter, founder of Reach Out and Read, and daughter; and Sheila Solomon Klass, professor, author, and mother.

This is an unusual book from two witty and gifted authors (you may be familiar with Perri's column in Knitter's magazine, or with her book Two Sweaters for My Father, a collection of essays about knitting). The mother-daughter team wrote it in tandem, apparently doing little or no editing of the other's work, but writing in response. When they read aloud sections from their writing, I felt as if I were in the middle of a great conversation. They write on their relationship, their relationships with their children, their travels together, the knitting Perri does for Sheila, the way they cook, and anything else that comes up. It includes recipes. It includes knitting patterns. Really, when was the last time a "regular" book included knitting patterns?

After the mad crush at the last book signing I attended, I was a little surprised to see a crowd closer to 2o than to 100, in part because comparing this book to Knitting Rules!, Every Mother is a Daughter has a much wider potential audience. Don't get me wrong - I love Stephanie and her niche of knitting humor. But I'm of the mind that the Yarn Harlot book signings are much more about getting together as a knitting community than there are about the books themselves. Last night was in line with every other (non-Stephanie) book signing I've ever attended, because it was about the book and the author rather than the friends you'd expect to see.

This has a potential for a longer conversation about the commercial impact of knitblog "buzz," but maybe we'll save that for another day. (Although you could buzz about the Klass and Klass book -it's quality writing and reading and cooking and knitting.)

Mother's Day is coming. I didn't do any impressive Mother's Day knitting, but if you need proof that I love my mom, look at her Christmas present. Anyway, if you aren't done your knitting, your mother will like this book. (And, Dad? This is not a good day to show Mom the blog. Thanks.)