Taking The Long Way Home

I started making baby hats for the local hospital this summer, as a way of justifying my knitting habit, and as a way to meet people in a town that's still new to me. Knitting in public is something I love to do, and knitting something tiny in public is almost always a good conversation starter. People are curious, and little hats make them happy. Almost as happy as my red rain boots also seem to make them. The hats I make started out as regular newborn size, and when I delivered my first batch, I threw in a few that accidentally came out too small (I thought). As it turns out, those little bitty hats are the ones most asked for by the nurses who distribute them. The last time I saw the volunteer coordinator, he showed me the two tiniest hats he still had, and told me they wanted more like those, and even smaller. What??? He had to be mistaken. No way could anybody be that little. I've certainly never seen a human so small. But I did some googling, and sure enou...

I've been thinking about changing the name of this blog for a while. Taking the Long Way Home no longer applies. I am home, here at the beach, in my happy little house, with sand on the floors and sticks and string in my hands. Home, at least until I head for the big Home beyond this world. I'm certainly not in a rush to get there , so I guess I'm still taking the long way as much as I have control over. But still, and then again, all I can really write about with any authority is life as it is, right here and now. So a name change seems in order. I suppose it could be blog suicide, but so what. I don't have that many readers, and I don't make any income from it. (I'd be OK with changing that.) I have little to lose, so I might as well do what I want. I usually do, and it usually works out. The new name will be... drum roll... Knitting in Public . Or maybe I Knit in Public (which I was able to get the .com for). Knitting in public is something I do all the...

The Oregon Coast is chilly in winter (and much of the rest of the year), and I wanted to knit something I could snuggle up in rather than turning the heat up, up, up. A wrap seemed good. And I wanted pockets too, because they're useful, and because women have historically been deprived of pockets. True story. Look it up. Most of the time I knit really simple things that can be made without continually reading a pattern. If I could read and knit, I'd read a book, not a pattern. So much more interesting, right? So far, I haven't figured out how to do that, except to listen to audio books, which are not the same kind of fun as hearing my own little voices in my head, you know? When I have to choose, read or knit, knitting usually wins. So wandering around Google Images, Pinterest, and Ravelry for something like a "shawl with pockets," I came across a lot of patterns for Reader's Wraps. This was a great idea I'd never heard of. All I wanted were dimension...

I have an image of my new self, my beach self, my (way) post-beads self and post vegan cheerleader self (although I'm still vegan). This best-old-lady-I-can-morph-into self, includes designing things with sticks and string (knitting and crochet), and sharing patterns with the world. In this image, I never make a mess of anything, and all my ideas translate beautifully into soft and splendid items to decorate ourselves and our homes. In this image... I am someone completely other than my real self, who has at least as many failures as successes, and little idea of how to write a kitting pattern. Truth is, I actually do make a lot of very fine things, between the failures. Friends walk into my living room and look around saying, You made that? And that? And that??? Yes, yes, yes I did. And it's all cool and wonderful. That's how it made the cut to live in my home with me. I look at the knitted lampshade in the corner, the lace encased glass fishing floats, the crystal trimm...

I'm back. After almost a year filled with painting, construction, decorating, starting our Airbnb business, guests and beach walks, and getting to know our new home town, winter is sneaking in the back door, making me wonder how in the world I'm going to survive our second soggy winter without the distraction of a house to remodel. I love it here, but winter anywhere always scares me a little bit. I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to pressure myself into teaching some cooking classes. I think I should , but I don't really want to. I think people would like it, but I don't think I would. I have all this training , all this experience , all this love for my plant-based life, but for some reason, I just don't want to put it out there. What I want to do is knit (or crochet or just generally play with sticks and string). It's time I started listening to those Wants, those desires , that come from deep inside, rather than the Shoulds that come from some d...