The third entry on these Twelve Days of Christmas Knitting brings me, not to my needles, but to my mom’s. She wanted to make my little dancer something special this Christmas, so she made her a colorful skirt: out of stuff yarn. If you didn’t know, “stuff yarn” is made of several shorter lengths of … More Ten Crazy Skirt Stripes
This second installment of the Twelve Days of Christmas Knitting Crafting brings us, in reverse order, to the number 11. Eleven, in this case, happens to be the number of tiny top petal shapes I cut out of sealskin one October afternoon. I’m excited to learn how to work with sealskin, but I’m also intimidated. … More Eleven Pointed Petals
Oh dear, my dears, I am pooped. Permanently pooped, it feels like. Christmas is coming like a tinsel-covered nightmare train, but I am unfazed. My Christmas knitting is done and in the mail; Advent is humming along splendidly, and I am putting up my feet for the calm before the storm. I can’t show you … More An Attack of the Fuzzies
Sorry for the radio silence, friends. I’ve been beavering away on all the usual things – a sermon series on 2 Thessalonians, a series of meetings on translating the Alpha course, plowing into C. S. Lewis’s diary from his ’20s, reading the Hunger Games books twice, going for long drives in snowy landscapes, and turning … More Christmas Crazies and Beanies on Balloons
This is Rhinebeck weekend. I have never been to Rhinebeck. At this point, it’s looking pretty likely that I never will go Rhinebeck. My life just doesn’t involve going to major Sheep & Wool festivals anymore, and that’s OK. But for some reason, the fact that Rhinebeck is always the middle weekend in October is … More Relevant Information
There are two new markers of the equinox season. One is a biannual text from our cell phone company, informing us that because of the “sun transit,” the sun will be blasting directly at their satellite, and our service will be disrupted. The second is the placement of the afternoon sun such that, during our … More Two Mice In the Sun
I am a taker-on of big projects. You read this blog, you know that. If I’m going to take something on, I don’t want to just taste it; I want the complete experience. It’s an illness, really. Planning such projects is sometimes a stress outlet, which results in some embarrassingly large spreadsheets and some absolutely … More Spirits in Bondage: In Which I Blog About an Obscure Book of Poems
This is a story that begins with a book. N was given this book before she was born, by a knitterly friend of her mother’s. It’s a story about her mouse whose mother knits her a sweater while she waits for her baby sister mouse to be born. The prose is lilting and winsome, and… … More One Book, Two Sweaters
The last few inches of my handspun Lothlorien were completed while watching, for the third or fourth time, all the most obscure DVD extras on the LotR:FotR:EE. Not for the first time, I think to myself that the Lord of the Rings Films are, to a slice of my generation, our equivalent of Star Wars. … More Not Idly Do the Leaves of Lorien Fall
Fox fur is great for trim, and there’s the occasional use of rabbit, or even polar bear, if you are either a hardcore adventurer or made of money. However, the real meat (so to speak) of Inuit sewing-with-skins is done with seal skin. I’ve been longing to try sewing with sealskin for a while, so at … More Seal Skins, Staples, and Sartorial Oscillation: Inuit Arts and Me, Part 3
Osborn Fiber Studio 