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Time hardly means anything anymore, it seems, but one anniversary that feels more tangible than even my birthday these days is when I first started knitting. It’s impossible to overstate how much my knitting practice means to my mental health, which is perhaps one reason it occupies so much of my brainspace and time. I’ve never been a “country counter” when I travel, and I’m not especially fond of tallies that seem purposefully designed to rank people in competition with one another. This annual tally, however, isn’t a comparison at all, it’s just a look in the rearview mirror on my own makes before IRead More →

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Folks, I’ve got an unsettlingly large car maintenance bill and still not enough work to have set anything aside for expenses like this. Copywriting isn’t exactly the most raffle-able skill, but knitting? That’ll do. So, here’s what I’m doing. I’ve got roughly 1,930 yards of this earthy, tweedy gray yarn, a lovely wool/cashmere blend that is, yes, extremely soft. It’s a recycled yarn, meaning a store-bought sweater was taken apart to reclaim it, so I can’t get any more of it. And while 1,930 yards is a good amount of yarn, it’s not going to make a sweater for every body type or size. IRead More →

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I’ve never been fond of resolutions, but I do seem to love these sorts of review posts. (I ignore my personal blog 364 days a year, essentially posting only on my birthday every year.) And now that we’re all of the WHAT IS TIME ANYWAY mindset, in which it’s hard to remember if something happened last week or a decade ago, looking back over a year’s worth of knitting projects seems even more grounding somehow. It’s tangible, this craft, unlike my writing work. And tangible feels stable, if only for a moment. Here’s a recap of my 5th year as a knitter: Hours spent knittingRead More →

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In preparing for this year’s installment of my “by the numbers” series, I glanced at last year’s post and read the phrase, “2019 was, in many ways, a garbage fire year” which, as you can well imagine, sounds utterly ridiculous in retrospect. It’s hard to think of strong enough adjectives to describe how terrible 2020 was, and, of course, the awfulness that made the year so epically bad is far from over—COVID-19 still claims an absurdly high number of lives every day. We have a few vaccines approved now, yes, and the roll-out has been the furthest thing from smooth. And then there was theRead More →

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I’ve had what I consider an Unexpected Career for just shy of 14 years now. While I always loved to write, I never in a zillion years expected I’d make money doing it—let alone earn my living from it. When I was in college, the kind of work I do now didn’t even exist (there was no world wide web back then, kids), so even dreaming of this writing career wasn’t possible. And, if we can assume the unmitigated shitshow of the pandemic and the havoc it wreaked on my travel industry clients (the bulk of my work) is a temporary blip, I have paidRead More →

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So, apparently I’m going to make this a thing. Which makes me think I need a better system for naming these posts, or the titles will eventually get long. I’ll ruminate on that. In the meantime, let’s review a few knitting firsts from the past year. I wrote up a pattern and sent it to test knitters. I knit a sample for a local yarn dyer. I finally figured out a colorwork hat design I had been futzing with. I made socks from knitting-machine-cranked tubes. I did mosaic colorwork. I felted a project (on purpose!). I learned how to cable without a cable needle. And,Read More →

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Today marks the second anniversary of that first day I picked up knitting needles and, with my friend Amanda’s help, started down this path that has all but taken over my life. (In a good way.) During my first year of knitting, I completed a whopping 87 projects, the vast majority of them being pussyhats. I accumulated an absurd amount of yarn, mostly from Goodwill, and mostly (it turns out) acrylic and not very good. I learned a great deal by trial and error – not knowing what I “shouldn’t” know was enormously helpful in not holding me back from trying new things – andRead More →

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I met my friend Amanda at (now-defunct) Happy Knits in Portland one year ago today so she could teach me to knit. I had casually mentioned on Facebook that I was sorta kinda thinking I wish I knew how so that I could make my own pussyhat for the upcoming march. “Meet me at 11am tomorrow,” Amanda had replied. And, never one to ignore instructions, I went. I honestly thought I’d make a pussyhat, maybe a few others for friends if I had time, and then be done with it. Are you chuckling now? Because I am. Oh, the folly. One year later, I’m lookingRead More →