Osborn Fiber Studio

Links to each pattern’s post:
Fernhead
Fernhands
Waves
Toast
Toasthead
Toasthands
Spike
Spikehands
Hemisphere
Fragile
Fragilehands
Fragilehead

Welcome to all new and existing subscribers to my blog! WordPress, and the world of online writing, has changed a fair bit in the 15+ years I’ve been here, and I’m finally catching up. Chances are good that you’re reading this from the comfort of your email inbox, and if so, thanks for letting me visit. Starting on Monday, right here, I’ll be revealing the patterns in my book, Migraineur, one every other day of Advent. If you’re reading this because you clicked a link, please do subscribe – that will make sure you get the pattern reveals straightaway, a little advent treat for you. And sometime in there – the exact date is not yet fixed – you will be able to order the book itself.

But before those reveals begin, I thought I might address a question I’ve gotten a few times over the years I’ve been working on this project, as I’ve shared about it with friends: why migraines? Why would you choose something so unpleasant for your inspiration, rather than drawing from the beauty around you, or the many blessings in your life?

I’ve always been intrigued by subversive uses of textile crafts. I remember the first time I heard of such a project, in a featurette I can no longer find in a magazine I’ve forgotten, an artist had knitted a series of replicas of hand grenades in pink yarn. This has happened many times now: fiber arts as protest, turning something hard or awful into something soft and beautiful. At the same time, such creations also turn a medium that is mostly seen as harmless and incidental into a hard statement.

This type of artistic craftivism has always intrigued me, and opened my mind to the possibility of using craft in that transformational way.

In this project, Migraineur, what was transformed was not an external evil, but an internal sensation. At different times in my life, I’ve gone through periods of frequent migraines. Once a week or so I’d be laid flat in bed as the only way of coping. During one such phase in the mid-2010s, when I was prostrate with a migraine, I started coming up with pattern ideas. I couldn’t really think actively; I couldn’t do much except relax all cranial muscles and feel which direction the pain was pulsing. Those lines of pain became shapes, and the shapes could be written down, and the writing could translate to a knitted thing. At the same time, perhaps because I was just getting into spinning again and was playing with colour combinations on the daily, I would also see colour combinations every time I closed my eyes. Here’s how I put it in the introduction to my book, where I describe the different types of migraine pain as “visitors”:

As I got to know my visitors, I gave them colours. I imagined they had shapes. And then those shapes took form as knitted items. Usually in garter stitch, with expressive contrasting lines communicating sensation through geometry. Usually I kept these ideas easy, so I could bear the idea of knitting them while in some stages of migraine pain. Unpleasantness became comfort to wrap around myself. The poems came easily, arising from the same ideas and movements as the patterns, and with help, they were refined into something worth sharing.

It was only when I started knitting the patterns, many years later, when I realized the redemptive nature of what I was doing: turning pain into comfort.

In 2020/2021, I received recognition for my contribution to Kate Davies’ design competition, “My Place,” for my pattern The Thaw. At that point, with my youngest almost ready to go to school, I decided it was time to start puttering away at my first book collection. I have lots of pattern collection ideas, but this idea seemed most appropriate in scope. In that way it was a purely pragmatic choice – I have other ideas, but they all required more work and would benefit from having more experience first. (Sweater grading, anyone?) Kate’s enthusiastic support for my vision sealed the deal.

I am not the same person I was when I came up with most of these pattern ideas. The first draft of the first poem was written in 2009, and the first pattern idea came to me in 2017! I still get migraines, but they aren’t as debilitating as they used to be. I’ve figured out most of my triggers and they are mostly under control. That may change – women’s bodies go through all sorts of changes, and migraines are just one aspect of that for some people.

But in the years since this project started, my belief in the transformative power of making has only strengthened. I really don’t believe in an arts/crafts distinction – the meaning in what humans make is there, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, spoken or unspoken, public or private. Whether objects are practical or not, in this day and age making something by hand is a choice that is always says something: time isn’t money; time is life, and this is how I’m spending mine.

This project aims to be transformational in a particularly redemptive way. It’s a very simple message: something bad can inspire something beautiful. It doesn’t make the bad thing better, but it accepts it as part of life. It’s the acceptance that does it for me, on just about every level.

I don’t know if this message will resonate for everyone. I know for some people it will still be too unpleasant. For others it will be too positive – as if all pain can be Polyanna-ed into lovely content. No, I’ll never tell you how to feel about your journey. All I know is that I was given this gift, and it’s ready to be shared. What you do with it is entirely up to you.

Thanks so much for allowing me into your browser, your inbox, your eyeballs, your life. Thanks for spending your life-minutes reading my words. If you like what you see here, please take a minute to share a link with a friend and encourage them to subscribe to this blog – this really is a key time for me, and it means a lot when someone trusts me enough to recommend me. Expect the first pattern reveal on Monday – it’s one of my favourites.