Bowie Halloween

“So, Wyatt. What are you going to be for Halloween?”

“David Bowie.”

And a lot of times, he added, “I remember the day he died. I was in kindergarten.”

The whole answer is pretty show stopping, and I think it could not be more appropriate for this time of year. But unless Wyatt was talking to a fellow fan, or a person who felt really comfortable talking to an 8-year old about the death of an icon, the conversation often stopped there. Because really, what do you say?

In the last 6 weeks, I have learned a lot about the evolution of David Bowie as a performer, at least from a clothing perspective. We have taken out nearly every book in the San Francisco Public Library System that relates to early 1970s Bowie, as well as ones that go far beyond that era. Wyatt was very clear from the start that he wanted to go with the Ziggy Stardust Bowie, but with the lightning bolt.

“Mom. If I don’t have the bolt, no one will know who I am.”

“Fair point. But technically, the bolt was Aladdin Sane’s makeup. Ziggy had a sun in the middle of his forehead. Are you sure you don’t want to do the sun?”

“YES. Last year I was a galaxy and everyone will think I’m being like an alien or something.”

And so, we opted to exercise poetic license in this costume, merging elements of both characters.

I had no idea that Ziggy Stardust wore an asymmetrical knitted jumpsuit with intricate colorwork by Kansai Yamamoto. But there it was, in the book. And there were all my various colors of fingering weight yarn, and suddenly there seemed no other reasonable option than to make this jumpsuit happen. I had just over a month. Wyatt’s backup plan was zombie, so either way, we’d be fine. But I’d need to make swift and steady progress, I told him (and myself), before we’d buy the wig and face paint for this costume, just in case it started to look like this was too big a task. (I mean, I’m nothing if not practical, right?)

Experience with previous years costumes came in handy for this one. I custom-knit the suit without a pattern, based only on Wyatt’s measurements and my knitting gauge. I know, you’re also shocked there’s no pattern for a child (or adult) sized asymmetrical unitard. I consulted methods on how to make leggings, considered options for how to make the top, and figured I should also steek (cut) the side to add a zipper. We made some modifications (in addition to using simpler olorwork). Because it isn’t 1972, we went with a boy short leg and an above-nipple neckline. More modern and comfortable for this particular 8-year old . It worked, and I’m really proud of how it turned out.

Here are some in—process photos…

Once the knitting was done, we moved on to the wig and face paint practice.

Even better than my being proud of the work I did, Wyatt announced it was epic. And that’s about as high a compliment as he gives.

Here are Wyatt’s thoughts on his costume (typed by himself): Yes I do think it is epic. I love it so much I especially love the wig and I love the whole suit. It’s my best costume ever.

How to Make Good Crafting Decisions

Did you know I used to hate shawls? I've come around, obviously. My struggle was more with how to style them. Fortunately, my friends have taught me to appreciate the versatility and warmth of a shawl. And it's easy to love how shawls don't have to fit (no sleeves! no torso!).

Which brings me to my new pattern. It's a shawl called Caravanserai. Here's the blurb, or "pattern romance," about it:

For the travel-loving knitter, this generously sized triangular shawl packs down to nothing. Caravanserai’s bold color changes and geometric lace are just the ticket, whether you’re twirling the night away in your favorite little black dress, dining al fresco in Amalfi, or warming-up après ski. Built centuries ago in the desert regions of Asia and North Africa, a caravanserai was a roadside inn with a central courtyard where travelers could rest and recover from the day’s journey. Wherever you’re headed, toss a playful tassel across your shoulder and enjoy the airy drape of this fly-off-the-needles statement shawl.

Through the end of July 2018, I am donating 50% of Caravanserai pattern sales to RAICES, to support their work providing legal services for immigrant families. You can find more information about RAICES here: https://www.raicestexas.org/about/.

If you knit, please consider picking up a copy of the pattern. And if you don't knit, please consider picking up a pattern anyway! I'm sure you can convince someone to knit the shawl for you or at least teach you how to do it for yourself. Also, please share this post! The more patterns I sell, the bigger the donation to RAICES, an organization doing really important work.

The yarn I used for Caravanserai is Cormo Fingering by Sincere Sheep. The moment I shipped Sincere Sheep my sample for their show booth, I began work on another version in the same yarn for myself. I'm working from my stash for this one. It has been surprisingly fun to mix and match colors I'd never have thought would work together. I have one row left of diamonds to do, then I'm on to the tassels. It's a good summer project--not too hot, easy to pick up and put down without losing my place, and super portable.

This summer, in and around craft projects, travel, and everything else, we've been talking a lot in our family about making good decisions as consumers. Plastic Free July and watching Blue Planet have been the catalysts for the discussions. Eliminating plastic waste wherever possible is important and so is thinking more broadly about other purchasing decisions. Fortunately, we all can address more than one issue at a time. What easier place to start than in our crafts? I mention yarn and knitting here, but these considerations apply to any other craft. They also apply to anything you want or need to buy. But sometimes it's easier to start new habits on something less daunting than every aspect of your entire life. Here are my thoughts so far.

Making Good Crafting Decisions

Use what you've got

• Reduce waste by working from your stash whenever possible.
• Consider giving previously knitted yarn a new life by knitting it into something else. Check out the Unraveling Club at Reunion Yarn.

What? You don't have enough yarn in your stash and lack the patience of a saint required for unraveling? I hear you. That's me usually me, too. Most often, a new project means shopping for new yarn. But before buying...

Do some research before you buy

I know. I'm so eager to get started on that new project, too. But remember that crafting is, compared to many things in our modern world, slow. It is also optional. If you're going to spend all those hours knitting that sweater, shawl, pair of socks or first hat, you can afford to spend some time doing some research to make good decisions about your yarn (and patterns, too).

When shopping for new yarn, go deeper than the basic questions of what's required for the pattern, what fiber you like, and what colors you prefer. Ask questions like, who's behind this company that makes the yarn I want to buy? What are their manufacturing and employment practices? Are those practices sustainable and fair? What are the company's values? The "About" section on most companies' websites will often answer many of these questions. if not, ask. Send the company a direct message through social media, drop an email to customer support, or buck the text/email/dm trend and call them on the phone.

Actions matter more than intentions

Remember that the answers you get about a company's values and practices may not match how a company acts. It's the actions, not the intentions, that matter. Pay attention to what a company actually does, call them out when they blow it, and let them know what (if anything) they can do to have a chance to earn back your business.

Speak up

Speaking up about your decision to take your business elsewhere is critical to raising a company's awareness and hopefully, encouraging them to do better.

For example, you can read here about an issue that Lady Dye Yarns experienced and shared regarding Madeline Tosh. Madeline Tosh's response to me and others on Instagram regarding this issue was so toxically dismissive that I plan to never buy their yarn or any other product from them ever again, and I let them know as much. Another recent example involves Brooklyn Tweed. You can read here about their "dick move." I have unsubscribed from their newsletter and told them why I'm not buying from them.

In short: Be resourceful, get informed, speak up, and support companies and people who deserve your business. Repeat.

You can find the Caravanserai shawl pattern in my Ravelry shop.

Sweater Weather

This February and March, I knit my most complicated project yet: a Channel Cardigan.

You see, I had serious envy over Wyatt's really scrumptious, cabled, purple Arlo cardigan, and the Arlo pattern doesn't come in adult sizes.

The Channel Cardigan was my first ever group knitting project. My friend Maja, who was in search of an excellent cardigan, suggested we choose a pattern and do it together as a knit-a-long (or KAL). I told my friend, Sarah, about it, and she suggested the pattern. We three then connected over group text where we created the perfectly supportive-yet-competitive virtual knitting environment. Imagine the Great British Baking Show, but with yarn, no Brits, and spanning a few months in different locations. We had one American and one Australian in San Francisco, and one American in South Carolina, each of us with varying demands on our time and facing different construction challenges. We shared our progress photos, asked and responded to questions about the pattern, teased each other for getting too far ahead, fell behind, caught-up, took the lead, sought the others' counsel on whether a particular error really mattered enough to go back and correct it, and occasionally, we veered delightfully into non-knitting related life stuff. We even had a modern knitting circle by FaceTime one afternoon in February. This project was truly everything good.

Truthfully, there's no way I would have finished my cardigan by now without this KAL. In classic me fashion,  I decided to substitute yarn. I wanted to use Cestari merino yarn instead of Brooklyn Tweed. And because I am impatient with shipping and starting projects, I bought the entire sweater's worth of yarn at once instead of just buying one skein to see how it would work. Maja, on the other hand, smartly went with the recommended yarn. Sarah already had her yarn (which also ended up being a great choice). My substitution decision cost me dearly in hand strain. To even get close to the size stitches I needed, I had to knit thick-ish puffy yarn on teeny tiny needles (or, for those of you who speak yarn, I was knitting woolen-spun, worsted weight yarn on size 1 and 2 needles) and even then, I had to make adjustments to the pattern as I went (my gauge was still a little too big). Live and learn? I doubt it.

I mean, the cardigan fits perfectly, so I haven't really learned my lesson. The fact that it fits so well kind of feels like a miracle. And when I look at the stitch pattern, I think, "Someone who is a yarn magician must have made this!" Then a vague, achy twinge in my right hand and elbow reminds me that I AM THAT YARN MAGICIAN. But the best part of this project, by far, was working on it with Maja and Sarah. I love how we used technology to bring us together and turn the slow crafting of our individual cardigans into a shared experience of successes (and the occasional screw-up).

Also! We have been cooking pretty much everything out of the cookbook My Darling Lemon Thyme (Maja's pick, and I finally bought my own copy). It's a vegetarian, gluten-free cookbook, and it's spectacular. Here are photos of some of the things we have made:

Stitch It To The Man

Do you curse?

Some people don't, and I respect that. I, on the other hand, enjoy a well-placed, well-timed "bad f-word," even if it's only in my head because Wyatt's around. Strictly speaking, curse words aren't necessary, but neither is cheese, chocolate, or whiskey.

The subject of cursing brings me to my latest pattern: Stitch It To The Man. It's my tenth published pattern and last pattern for 2017. All three of the designs in the pattern—from clean to full-on curse—came together easily for me, and I finished knitting the sample quickly. But then I got stuck. I couldn't, for the life of me, name this pattern. Even worse, I could only write terrible, stilted descriptions of it. Good thing I have clever, irreverent, and generous friends. My high school friend, Molly, and her oldest daughter (both in Massachusetts) named the pattern. Isn't it perfect? Once the pattern had a name, Sarah (in South Carolina) wrote the best blurb ever:

Let’s work together to dismantle white supremacy. With delicate snowflakes and a gut punch of solidarity, this beanie roars the message you choose: “end white supremacy” for your grandmother, and “fuck white supremacy” for your daughter. Choose a character mark for a whiff of mystery, or pick a vowel to make your point loud and proud. Suggestions for customizing the ribbing band are also included.

We’re serious. This privilege absurdity needs to end. 100% of proceeds for this pattern are donated monthly to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

And then? My editor (in Texas) decided to charge me exactly zero dollars to work on this project.

I love all the generosity that went into this hat. And I love how this project, thanks to all five of us, spans so much of the United States.

Of course, the proceeds are going to the Equal Justice Initiative (in Alabama):

The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

While I was knitting the sample for this pattern, I listened to Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy. I won't try to describe the book here, but I will say it's an absolutely essential read, and it is the reason why I chose to support EJI with this project.

I'd love to count you as a collaborator on Stitch It To The Man. Whether you're a knitter or a friend of a knitter, you can buy the pattern here.

Other books I've been reading while working on this project are: Michael W. Twitty's The Cooking Gene, and Rivers Solomon's  An Unkindness of Ghosts. Both of these incredible books are written by authors of color, and they address in their own distinct and riveting ways how truly critical it is to end, f*ck, or fuck white supremacy. Read these two books, too. Or give them as holiday gifts. Or both!

That's right: it's the holidays. This weekend, we decorated the Christmas tree, in and around doing about a zillion other things. And I finally used the butternut squash that arrived in our CSA box during the week of Thanksgiving. I made soup with a recipe that went as far away from sweet butternut squash flavor as I could find: Butternut Squash and Tomato Soup. I'm pleased to report it is a new family favorite. All three of us happily ate it two days in a row (it's gone now, or we'd still be enjoying it), and that never happens with squash soup. I served the soup with a kale Caesar salad. This Caesar vinaigrette is the best. And don't roll your eyes when I tell you that you need to massage the kale before you dress it. It only takes five minutes and it makes all the difference. Here's what to do: Once you've washed and stemmed the kale, chop the leaves into salad-sized pieces and put them in a big bowl. Drizzle a little olive oil on the kale, and with your (super clean) hands, squeeze and smoosh the life out of the kale. The volume of leaves will shrink by about 1/3 or 1/2. When you're done with this step, add dressing to your taste, and toss. The salad will keep beautifully for several days in the fridge if you have left-overs. Some good cheese and bread rounded out our plates nicely.

Better and Better

Have you heard? I just published a new pattern. It's called the Do Better Beanie. I've been writing all the social media blurbs for it in a super positive light, because, you know, POSITIVITY. And the messages are totally positive, and I do truly mean them that way.

But I've already started joking with friends who are peeved about, say, being ignored, "It sounds like you might need to borrow Listen Up!" Or say, hypothetically, there's a huge school fundraiser this weekend and parents aren't signing up for shifts (even though they know that have to), thinking they can duck responsibility without being noticed. Wouldn't it be nice to slap them with a Show Up hat? Or maybe you know someone who could use their power and influence to make things better for others, but doesn't. Speak Up for that one! Unfortunately, it's way more practical for me to passive aggressively make a totally insincere offer to lend any of these people the appropriate hat than to actually knit them. Scaling craftivism is tricky, obviously.

You can find the link to the Do Better Beanie here on this site under Designs, or just click directly to my Ravelry shop.

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was great but weird. Marc came down with a beast of a cold on Thursday morning, so Wyatt and I made our second annual Thanksgiving trip to Sebastopol without him. Not only did Wyatt and I miss having Marc there, so many of my relatives were so disappointed not to see him. They had saved up all these great things to tell him since they last talked a year ago! I think that if you have to skip Thanksgiving, the next best thing is to be genuinely and specifically missed.

Here is a Thanksgiving photo along with photos of  some new-to-us junk sculptures by Patrick Amiot.

Finally, if you're looking for a great recipe for brussels sprouts, check this one out. We made it this weekend. It tastes way better and is much less fussy than the one I have tried from Cook's Illustrated where each sprout half must be placed individually and none of them get much color. Whether you use Minimalist Baker's recipe for dipping sauce or your own, don't skip it unless you want to make Wyatt sad.

Little Chicken

"Mom. I showed Jim the yellow chicken I knitted and you know what he said? He said he'd give me five dollars for it. Can you even BELIEVE that? He only offered me five dollars. Why did he do that? I worked on it for SO MANY WEEKS. I wouldn't sell it to him for less than...NINETY dollars."

Ah, the value of craft. It warms my knitter's heart that Wyatt fully grasps that crafts take time and energy, and that makers should be compensated well for their work. We will discuss market forces another time. Meanwhile, our neighbor, Jim, will have to hunt for a bargain chicken elsewhere.

This little yellow chicken was Wyatt's first knitting project at school. I (obviously) wasn't there to document the process, but this knitting project is even easier than the bunny. The steps are: (1) knit a square with yellow yarn, (2) sew the square on two sides to make a triangle., but leave a little space for stuffing, (3) stuff the chicken, (4) close the stuffing hole (5) get brown yarn and make one stitch for each eye, (6) get orange yarn and do three stitches for the beak.

Looking at crafts from a time, materials, and skills perspective with a child who understands how long it takes to make things means we start from the idea that handmade things should actually be expensive and possibly out of our price range. It means that when we see amazing things, like this wooden village with a candle-powered propeller that costs a small fortune, our conversation goes something like, "Wow! This village is amazing. Look at all the careful work that they did and all the details. We can't spend that much money, but it is really beautiful."

Crafts, cost and value reminds me of the trivets from last year. We're not working on anything nearly as complicated or time-consuming this year. I don't actually have a plan for homemade gifts yet, but every week that goes by means whatever we do will be that much more simple. We can always make some more paper lanterns.

Speaking of lanterns, over the weekend, we went to the German International School's Lantern Walk. It was lovely! While we were there, Wyatt made a lantern out of half of a plastic container that had holes punched in the side to attach a mini LED on a pipe cleaner and a beaded pipe cleaner handle. Some Elmer's glue, tissue paper, ribbon, and stickers made a beautiful, sturdy, and portable lantern.

I don't have a new recipe to share this week, but we recently tried two new (to us) products! The first is a gluten-free gochu jang from Sinto Gourmet. I've been looking for a gluten-free gochu jang for over a year, and this one is amazing. I found it in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods.

The second thing we tried was Beyond Meat burgers. Two out of the three of us thought they were amazing. I, however, was not a fan. I thought the burgers smelled weird out of the package, cooking did not improve the smell, and I could only eat half of mine.  Neither Marc nor Wyatt noticed the smell and said they'd eat them all the time. The ingredient list, however, is pretty long and sciencey-processed-sounding, so "sometimes" might be a better call than "all the time."

I prepared the burgers according the the package instructions (down to using a thermometer to confirm they reached at least 165 degrees before I served them). We also really did them up fancy with condiments and toppings.

Hooray for Librarians! And "Brownies."

This weekend, I published a new pattern! It's the Librarian Beanie. My friend, Anne, who is a librarian in real life, modeled for me. I have the best friends.

I did not come up with this design all by myself. As I said before, I have the best friends. My friend, Sarah, (who is a librarian and very busy with graduate school, work, life, and raising two little boys) and I were texting a couple of months ago about volunteering, politics, and how there's basically not enough time to resist and connect in all the ways we would like. In a text that might have had a slightest whiff of frustration tinged with exhaustion, she wrote something like, "I don't think I can take on more right now. Also? I'm a librarian. Librarians are f*cking helpful." I about died. Sarah wondered about putting that last sentence on a t-shirt. I offered to knit it into a hat. Around the same time I offered to knit it into a hat, she revised the sentence to read, "Librarians: Helpful AF."  Collaboration at its best, right?

Normally, I design patterns in wool yarn. I love Sincere Sheep's yarn, and I used Equity Fingering in this design. But my friend, Anne, is allergic to wool, and this project seemed like a perfect opportunity try something new. Vegan Yarn seemed like a great choice. I used their Pleiades Sock yarn, which is made of bamboo, cotton and elastic, and dyed with low-impact dyes. If you don't (or your favorite librarian doesn't) do wool, it's a terrific alternative.

So please tell your knitting-library-and-librarian-loving friends about the Librarian Beanie!

Quick totally unrelated question: What are you all doing for breakfast foods lately? We're still into homemade yogurt (lately with sheep's milk, of all things, which is amazing and so mild), and I've also started making a version of this custard, but with roasted sweet potatoes instead of pumpkin. It has been a big hit, but I'm ready for the next great make-ahead idea.

There are also school birthdays coming up where Wyatt will bring-his-own treat, so we made these "brownies" on Sunday, and they're good. I would never mistake them for actual brownies, but as a gluten-free, reasonably healthy bar cookie, we like them a lot. If you make them, do not make the mistake we did and use an immersion blender to mix (is that what they meant by "hand blender?"), because if it's like our immersion blender, it will seriously overheat before you're done mixing. I think a regular mixer would work fine.

I cut the bars and then froze them individually for easy, single servings.

The Latest: News and Knitting

This week's blog post was going to be entirely about the knitting patterns I released into the wild late last week. But this weekend, white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, and through their acts of terrorism, they severely injured and killed people, including Deandre Harris and Heather Heyer. The president has, once again, shown us who he is by failing to immediately denounce the neo-Nazis and their actions. I wish I were shocked.

I've read great pieces about how we can respond to the events in Charlottesville, including this one, and this one, about how to talk to children about it.

But a "what happened in Charlottesville" conversation is a tiny part of the ongoing conversation we (and when I say "we," I mean white people, in particular) need have every day with our children. Hate mongers don't get to decide when I address racism (or any other societal scourge) with Wyatt. So today? We continued reading Rad Women Worldwide. We read about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose. Sophie's story is inspiring, remarkable, and so worth your time. I hadn't heard it before this week. Here are some of the things we discussed in connection with our reading:

• "Wait. So she JOINED the Nazis? Didn't she know they were bad?" (She joined because she didn't know what they were about. When she learned they were about hatred and inequality, she fought them.)
• "I'm smiling right now because she was so brave making those papers and leaving them around--she could have been arrested for that!" (YES!)
• "Do the people that hate always lose? Like in that war we talked about, the one before the enslaved people were free, and in this one, the Nazis lost. But if they lose, they don't always get killed, right? So there are still some of those kinds of people around." (Right. We've talked about them before. People who hate other people because their skin is a different color, for example.)
• "Hang on. So those Nazi people liked people like them. And I'm white like them, so they'd like me, right?" (Ah. Good point. They might. But they don't like people who stand up for others, either. I know it feels good when people like us. But it's okay, and sometimes it's really good, not to be liked. You're safe. Your dad and I and other grown-ups keep you safe. There are a lot more people (like us) who believe in equality and fairness, and we win because we work together.)

We win because we work together. May it be so.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In lowercase "n" news, I published some patterns last week. (No, there aren't any good transitions from Nazis to knitting. Trust me. I've looked.) My Coastal Urban Trails Collection includes patterns for three accessories inspired by the rugged beauty (and fog!) of San Francisco’s beaches, parks, and open spaces. All three patterns include two versions: one for a bulky yarn and one for a lighter weight yarn.

There's a hat, Nest: Dove (in O-Wool Chunky Merino) and Hummingbird (in O-Wool Local).

There's a cowl, Strata: Mountain (in O-Wool Legacy Bulky) and Sand (in Sincere Sheep Equity Sport).

And there are also boot cuffs!  Footpath: Stroll (in O-Wool Legacy Bulky) and Hike (in Sincere Sheep Equity Sport).

Nest and Strata use a technique called helix knitting (or helical stripes) (like a barber pole!) in their construction. I have included how-to instructions and a link to a video, too. It's hard for me to believe I've been working on these patterns since the winter; no one ever said I was efficient or prolific in this new occupation. I am pretty excited to see how much people enjoy knitting and wearing them.

(If you're so inclined, each pattern is available individually in my Ravelry store, and the ebook containing all three is 15% off through the end of August.)

From Dye Workshop to Shawl

Check out this shawl I just finished. Isn't it pretty? Aren't the colors great? The pattern is Hiraeth (with a couple of modifications because I wanted to use as much of my 1000 yards of fingering-weight yarn as possible). And the yarn? Well, I DYED IT MYSELF! Maybe not all by myself, exactly. I also had lots of guidance, thanks to a workshop hosted by Sincere Sheep and Kira K. Designs at Sincere Sheep's studio in Napa.

The workshop was super fun and incredibly instructive. To be clear, I am all for DIY experimentation when it comes to art or craft. But with natural dyes and nice yarn? I want to feel like I might actually get a result I want. Left to my own devices, the threat of disappointment looms large. I love to learn from Brooke (of Sincere Sheep). Her dyeing set-up is terrific, her knowledge of natural dyeing is astonishingly deep, and she infuses her spirit of generosity into every aspect of her teaching. I chose this particular workshop because gradient yarns have always confounded me. I didn't know how they were made, and I didn't know how best to knit with them. Now I know those things, and more.

Here are some photos from the workshop, Natural Dyeing Gradient Yarns.

We started the day by looking at all our color choices, and then we sketched how we thought we wanted our colors to go, from one end of the knitted blank to the other. For gradient yarns, which are yarns whose colors change over the length of the yarn, you can get that drifting color effect by starting with a "blank." A blank is yarn that has been knitted (usually by machine) into a long rectangle. You then dye the rectangle of yarn (which has also been mordanted, so the dye will stick), and when dyeing is complete and the blank is dry, you unravel the blank into a ball from which you can knit. Brooke guided us as to which dyes to use and in which order to achieve our desired effects. I chose to do gradients of green, from light to dark, on one blank (I used fustic and indigo). On the other, I went with greys and purples (I used fustic, logwood, tannin, and iron--I think. I can't find my notes!)

I thought these two skeins would look pretty marvelous together, but I didn't have an exact project in mind.

Once home, I let the thoroughly rinsed yarn dry, and I gleefully unraveled (ripping with abandon!) the blanks and wound them into cakes.

I then began searching for a pattern that I thought would work. I looked for fingering-weight yarn patterns that would use about 1000 yards of yarn. Eventually, I chose Hiraeth, and I modified the pattern as I went along to use more of the green skein and then to not run out of the purple one. I had to rip out some rows after realizing I had miscalculated, but it wasn't that bad.

I finished this project in record time. It is my first shawl. For all the knitting I have done, I have steered clear of shawls mostly because I have no idea how to wear them so that they look good and I don't feel silly. But enough insecurity! 

I think I now understand why so many knitters are shawl-obsessed. Shawls like this one can be really beautiful and easy and meditative to knit. They can also feel interminable, but that's not really something special about shawls. Also, the things that can drive you to distraction when knitting a sweater or a hat, like gauge, size and fit, are not really important in a shawl. As long as you're pretty close to the gauge the pattern requires, you'll have enough yarn and your shawl will drape and fit just fine. Low stress knitting at its finest.

I love a project like this one that teaches me things. In addition to learning to appreciate shawls, I now also know how gradient skeins are made and how to knit something lovely with them.

Inspired By

Happy Valentine's Day from this little mouse (and me).

My inspiration levels have not been overflowing lately. Shocking, I know. I have had only just enough spark to take someone else's work and riff on it.

This hat is a good example. I loved Bristol Ivy's Peace de Resistance Mittens pattern, but I hardly ever wear mittens. Hats, on the other hand, I wear all the time. So, I turned the mitten pattern into a hat.

I finished the hat on Sunday, and I have posted my project notes on Ravelry in case you would also like to make a hat like this one. I like mine so much I almost slept in it Sunday night.

I then turned to knitting a gift for Wyatt for Valentine's Day. For the last two years, I have knitted him a little Valentine's present. The first year was a red heart pillow (that I scented with lavender flowers and is now worn and pilled from love) and the second year was a bouquet of lavender flowers (that sit on his nightstand).

Last week, Wyatt reminded me that Valentine's Day was coming and asked if I had already started working on his present. (I do love how there is no chance my child will wait and wonder whether I will meet his expectation for a present. I mean, why hope quietly, count on mind reading, and risk disappointment when you can SPECIFICALLY ASK?) I hadn't, so I looked through Hansi Singh's book of Amigurumi Knits, and I opted to make him a banana slug, inspired by the snail in her book, the endless amount of rain we have been getting this winter, and my lack of lovely yarn for a shell. But, the problem was three-quarters of the way through the body, the slug looked a lot like a gangrenous-colored peen warmer (as my friend Sarah correctly observed).

So Monday afternoon, I bought the pattern I had found last week before I talked myself into making that stripped-down snail. I knitted furiously from when Wyatt went to bed until the wee hours of Valentine's Day morning, knitting, embroidering, and assembling a Valentine's Mouse. The mouse is adorable, and way more time-consuming than I had anticipated.

And for dinner? Inspiration has been lagging a bit there, too. We had lots of soup last week. But this Saturday, after another afternoon volunteering at the Presidio Nursery (weeding this week!), I tried making Cabbage Pad Thai for the first time. I know, I know. The rallying cries of "Zucchini noodles!" or "Cauliflower rice!" followed by, "You won't even notice the difference!" is utter nonsense. Of COURSE you will notice a difference. If you don't, you're not paying enough attention to your food. The question should be whether you like the substitution, not whether there's a difference. Sometimes I like the swap, and sometimes I don't. Same goes for Wyatt. He actually scowled when I said it was Pad Thai made with cabbage, and said, "WHAT? NO NOODLES?" And he wasn't wrong--we all really do love cabbage in many forms, but cabbage is not noodles. So I made the recipe as written but added a two bricks of brown rice noodles I had just pre-cooked (mixed them in with the cabbage at the end). We also added a sprinkle of mung bean sprouts, too. We had just enough for the three of us for dinner.

Halloween Countdown

Look what I found in the garden!

Last year for Halloween, Wyatt was an elephant. This year, he wanted to be a panda. I offered to knit him a panda hat and sew him a panda costume. He vehemently objected. "NO MOM. I want you to knit one JUST LIKE last year, only black and white, and we can paint rainbow buttons." Little known fact: Pandas are creatures of habit.

There was no way I was knitting another Union Suit, especially considering the first one still fits. Also, one of my rationalizations for knitting an entire Halloween costume is that I get to learn something new, so repeating a pattern wouldn't work. It took me several weeks, but I finally convinced Wyatt that the way to go this year was a pair of Hammer-style knitted play pants and a cardigan with a simple, panda-esque yoke. I sold him on the practicality of having a two-piece garment when he needed to go to the bathroom, promised he could paint buttons for the panda hat, and told him I'd put as many buttons as I could on the cardigan. It was May when we reached an agreement, in case you're curious about the timeline on a project like this. Then it was time to shop for yarn.

In addition learning something new, this knitting exercise requires my using sustainably and ethically made materials. While the yarns suggested for both of the patterns sounded lovely, I opted to use Quince & Co. yarns. Quince uses 100% American wool, and the wool is processed, spun, and dyed responsibly in the United States. I also used the leftover cotton fabric and thread from last year, and got buttons, once again, from Honey Be Good.

Substituting yarns in a pattern can be tricky, and the sweater and play pants patterns were no exception. I opted for Lark, which is a worsted weight yarn, even though both patterns were written for lighter weight yarns. I did a lot of swatching, modifying, measuring, and cursing as I went along. In the end, I made it all work.

I started with the hat (in Puffin), went on to the play pants (they photograph terribly, so there's no image of them alone), and then I did the cardigan. Why this order? As I told Marc, if were hit by a bus before finishing the cardigan, he could go get a 3/4-length sleeve black and white baseball shirt, and Halloween would be just fine. The big thing I learned from this costume is how to steek a cardigan. After getting past the terror, there's something truly empowering about slicing up the middle a sweater you just finished knitting, especially when it works as beautifully as it did here.

Last, Wyatt and I built a belly for the panda. We sewed three sides of a belly-sized rectangle of pink cotton interlock fabric to an old t-shirt of Wyatt's, stuffed it medium-full with stuffing I had stashed in a closet, and then we sewed the fourth side. Instant panda! Ha.

The one thing we forgot to do was grow bamboo. Does "fast growing" mean we can have stalks in a week? We'll see.

On Being Bold

Whenever I hear someone say, "I have no regrets!" I snarl a little bit to myself and think how amazing it must be to be able to take a 36,000-foot view of one's own poor behavior and decisions. Needless to say, I am not one of those people who claims to have no regrets. And as someone who poses a triple-threat in Worrying, Overanalyzing and Attempting To Affect Outcomes by Worrying and Overanalyzing, regrets are unsettling. Most of the things I now regret seemed like perfectly good ideas at the time.

On the other hand, some of my more rash, out-of-character decisions, ones where seconds later I wondered what on earth I had been thinking, have turned out to be some of my better calls. For example, take the time last spring when I was walking back to my car after dropping Wyatt at school and I saw his former nursery school teacher. She was walking with her friend who had recently started substituting for a teacher on maternity leave. Wyatt's former teacher waved exuberantly from down the block, and a few steps later, she exclaimed, "Good morning! We were just talking about you! Have you met my friend?" We exchanged introductions while I wondered (and worried about) what on earth they could have been discussing. She went on to gently pat the hat she was wearing, the one I had made her for Christmas the previous year, and praise it. She commented on how chilly it was when working outside with the children in the spring. And then she said,  "My friend here doesn't have a hat." I practically heard the penny drop down a coin chute somewhere in my brain, plink-plink-plunk, as I heard myself ask the friend, "Would you like me to make you a hat?"

Let's be clear. I'm not a person who volunteers to knit for friends of friends. My offer to knit that hat is a testament to Wyatt's former teacher's particular brand of kindness and boldness. As I walked on to my car, wondering what had just gotten into me, I pretty quickly decided that I should treat this hat as a design opportunity: This hat would become a pattern. With that plan in mind, I went to Imagiknit and bought a skein of Sincere Sheep Cormo Fingering in St. Bart's (a light blue, because we had clarified that the hat shouldn't be too bright, too red, or at all pink). I started swatching that day. What eventually came out of my design process was The Tiny Bubbles Beanie. 

A couple of weeks later, after I had delivered the hat, things got interesting. The teachers introduced me to a new friend, a formidable designer and sewist, with more knowledge in one tiny corner of her brain about fashion and the industry than I could research in any reasonable amount of time. She and I are convinced we will do something terrific together someday; meanwhile, we meet for coffee from time to time and inspire each other.

Around that same time, and also thanks to these teachers, I began to collaborate with the women behind Saans, a shop based in New York that features premium sustainable fashion with traceable origins. We are working together to create a line of sustainable knitwear, and we started with a hat. We debuted and sold out of our first run of this chic, playful beret (designed and knitted by me). More on the beret later, once they're available again, just in case you want to buy one...

Also this weekend, samples of all four of my patterns made a trip with Sincere Sheep to the Sheep and Wool festival in Rhinebeck, New York. Treetops, Owls, and Bubbles, knitted in the loveliest of Cormo yarns. I was sorry not to join them.

But I am so not sorry I knitted that hat last spring. In fact, I'm so happy with how that decision went that I've started seriously to consider making more rash decisions in the future.

Nostalgia and Pie

I'm usually not very good at "nostalgia."  I didn't keep any of my yearbooks. I think it's generally a mistake to go back to a place just because you used to go there all the time and you loved it. And I always politely decline the opportunity to treasure other peoples' stuff after they pass away.

That is, I always decline except for the other week when I didn't. In that instance, I happily accepted my aunt's offer to send me "a box or two" of knitting tools, yarn, books and patterns, much of which came from my late grandmother. In addition to the tools (which are amazing), and a Kelly-sized sweater's worth of gorgeous baby llama and silk yarn (already on the needles, pictured above), there were loads of extras to pass along to my new knitting friends (they were over the moon).

Look! I now have a nearly complete set of straight needles, in their own lovely case.

There were also musty folders of old, typewritten-fill-in-the-blank patterns from my grandmother's favorite yarn shops. There is not one photo with any of these patterns, most of them are for one size only, and the yarn, yardage, and gauge are absent from the instructions. So, even though I'll never knit these patterns, it was fun to see the names of some relatives for whom my grandmother had knitted various sweaters and to guess which ones she had knitted for me. Everything seemed to be in those folders, including the graph paper grids she had made of cousins' names when knitting their Christmas stockings.

The real paper treasures, though are these very old patterns, with revision dates of 1942 and 1918.

Make no mistake, times have changed. I can't even legitimately imagine when a reasonable plan for clothing the military involved the Red Cross handing out wool yarn and instructions to women who volunteered to knit "Gloves For Service Men" and "Medium Socks."

There's also this pattern, which based on the typeface, must have been from a couple of decades later. That Paris Hat! And Matching Dickey! What stylish Parisian would have been caught without a matching dickey? And what about the dickey? Gone years ago for good reasons, no doubt, but which ones?

I have no answers to those questions.

I also have no answer to the question I tweeted yesterday to Lucky Peach regarding how much butter I should add to their Sour Cream & Roasted Fig Pie. Wyatt and I had been drooling over the idea of this pie for a couple of weeks, and I finally bought the figs for it yesterday. As they were roasting, I re-read the ingredient list and the instructions, only to find that I was supposed to add an unspecified amount of melted butter to the filling. I guessed 3 Tablespoons. The pie turned out great.

My notes and changes:

• I used a frozen gluten-free pie shell from Whole Foods.
• I used 3 Tablespoons of melted butter. I have no idea whether that was right.
• I substituted a gluten-free flour blend for the flour. Because I was nervous that the pie seemed very runny (maybe I used too much butter--WHO KNOWS), I used 4 Tablespoons instead of 2.
• Because I prefer my child not-too-sugared (and because sometimes leftover pie happens for breakfast), I reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup.
• I baked the pie in our new toaster oven because: (1) we now have a toaster oven; and, (2) the big oven was busy cooking more stuffed tomatoes.

The pie was scrumptious. Creamy lemon curd flavor atop the most refined and sophisticated fig newton you can imagine. Bake one soon, while figs are still in season.

Crafternoon

"Mom. Do you know what I like about hot glue guns?"

"Ummm...everything?"

"Yes, but I really like that you don't have to wait for the glue to dry."

I've been hearing for the last few years from Wyatt's teachers that children have a seasonal rhythm. In the spring, the children begin to "breathe out." They need more space to move around, group projects become more challenging, and they are less able to focus. The exhale continues through the wildness of summer, and in the fall, the children begin to "breathe in." Their energy shifts, they're ready to begin to work together, and they can maintain more focus. Until last week, this mystical explanation struck me as a post-hoc rationalization for "Why We Have Summer Vacation."

But last week, I began to question my skepticism of the "seasonal childhood rhythm" when, to my surprise, every afternoon, Wyatt requested we do increasingly complicated crafts, and then he actually worked on them for hours. His attention and intensity were astonishing. We started saying we were having "Crafternoons."

Fortunately, we had a focus for our Crafternoons. Before leaving on vacation, Wyatt received a box from his craft pal, Benjamin. Benjamin had made him a money shark (for all his toy sale earnings), a ladybug, and a gnome. Everyone I care to know would have been thrilled to receive such perfectly thoughtful gifts.

Wyatt began planning presents for Benjamin while we were in Massachusetts. He basically got my mother's permission to raid her stash of googly eyes and fancy pipe cleaners, and then he stowed them in my suitcase. He started brainstorming what he could make out of egg cartons.

Our first Crafternoon involved making and photographing sparkly caterpillars. It didn't take long for me to just hand over the (low-temperature) glue gun and figure Wyatt would learn soon enough how to keep his fingers from getting burned. I assisted as needed, but he needed very little help.

Our second Crafternoon involved sewing a gnome, in the style of the gnome he had made at school last year. If you cut a piece of felt in the shape of a simple house, you can make two overcast stitch edges and one running stitch neck. A little stuffing, cinch of the neck, and a trimming of felt to make a face space, and you're there.

Our third Crafternoon involved a ceramics painting playdate at a local studio, more sparkly caterpillars (because he wanted one for himself), and putting Benjamin's presents in the mail.

During the fourth and fifth Crafternoons, Wyatt learned to knit: "In through the front door, running 'round the back, peeping through the window, and off jumps Jack!" Thanks to Maja for that rhyme.

Today, we were out of egg cartons. Even worse, we didn't have much time for Crafternoon. All Wyatt wanted to do was squish into some clay on the counter while I made dinner. But killjoy that I am, preferring my dinner silt-free, I redirected him to the glue gun. He happily busied himself bedazzling some felt...to make another gnome.

It's probably a good thing that school starts Wednesday.

Reach Out and Learn

Yesterday, I read a thoughtful blog post by Gaye Glasspie, one of the knitters whose Instagram posts I really love. Among other things, she wrote, "I never ever thought I would live in the world we are in right now. I never thought I would be in a space where folks looked at me and didn’t notice my smile FIRST. I never thought I would have to be afraid simply because I am different. That was then right? I mean it’s history and times are better right? I will simply say this…I wish I could wrap the world in yarn but I can’t, so keep everyone safe." This post came after a terribly violent week. I've seen videos of police officers killing more black men (Alton Sterling and Philando Castile), and videos of the shooting in Dallas following a peaceful protest over recent police shootings. I've read and listened to commentary about these events, too, and all my reading and listening has led me to sign-up with local racial justice organizations. (I know, what took me so long?) In short, Black Lives Matter.

Gaye Glasspie opened her blog post with a wish that the world be more like a yarn store, where "ALL yarn is welcome. All colors, all sizes, all material and name brands in the same place at the same time and no drama." If only, right? How do we even begin to get close to that "yarn store" (or choose your own utopian) ideal?

I think one way is by reaching out and learning from each other.

I learned to knit when I was in high school. I had returned from a summer exchange program in Norway where it seemed like everyone—men, women, old, young, and even teenagers—were knitters. I wanted to learn, too. Lucky for me, my mom set me up with Mrs. Shey,  my sister's former piano teacher, who is also a skilled knitter. Mrs. Shey (who is originally from Beijing) sat next to me for hours on her sofa while she coached me through the basics of knitting, corrected my mistakes, and helped me go shopping for patterns and yarn.

After high school, I didn't knit for years, but for whatever reason, I never parted with the late 1980s royal blue yarn that I bought with Mrs. Shey (and never finished turning into a cardigan).

The unused, and now vintage, balls of yarn got some new life this week, though, when I taught my friend, Amy, and her daughter, Alicia, how to knit. 

Amy and I met at the swimming pool where Wyatt takes lessons and Amy's son, Sean, has physical therapy sessions. Wyatt and Sean are the same age, and they think the same things are uproariously funny. More than that, Wyatt and Sean are in the pool at the same time so I get to talk to Amy for an uninterrupted thirty minutes every week. We talk about mom stuff: everything from wacky recipes we have tried, to disability services, to racism.

Since it's now summer, Sean's older sister, Alicia, also gets to hang out on the pool benches while Sean swims. She'd rather be in the pool, naturally. But two weeks ago, I started talking about knitting, and before I knew it, I had offered to teach Amy and Alicia how to knit. Their excitement and enthusiasm at the idea made me smile for the rest of the week.

I brought knitting needles and balls of the blue yarn with me to the next swimming session, and by the end of our thirty minutes, they were off to a great start. I advised that for the rest of the week, they should just keep knitting, even as they noticed mistakes. Within a couple of days, Amy texted me that they had used up their yarn, and they wanted to take the work off the needles. I stopped by their house to deliver more (blue) yarn, teach them how to cast-off, and to help them cast-on another practice project.

I really can't wait to see their progress, bask in their enthusiasm, and teach them more this week. Of course they're not the only ones learning. I'm learning different ways to look at slip-knots and stitches, that I don't have to be an expert at everything before I can teach something, and that if I pay attention and listen carefully, we all get better results.

Who doesn't love a good life lesson or two delivered through craft?

Treetop Owls and "Goldfish" Crackers

I have just published my third pattern! The Owl & Branch Beanie completes what I've named the Treetop Collection.

It was pretty thrilling to hit "publish" on Ravelry, and I love that people are "favoriting" my designs. But there's even more to be excited about. Hard copies of all three of my patterns will be available for purchase in the Sincere Sheep booth at TNNA in Washington, D.C. and at the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon later this month!

Obviously, I'm excited about the release of these patterns. And Wyatt is also excited, but for a different reason. He's thrilled he won't have to sit (or stand) for any more photos for a little while.

This weekend included a flurry of activities related to getting knitted samples and pattern copies ready for the shows. And it also included some baking during a low-key, at-home day today.

Wyatt has recently been asking for Goldfish Crackers. Or, I should say, he has been asking for gluten-free, goldfish-shaped crackers (which, as far as I know, only exist if you make them yourself). It remains my opinion that Pepperidge Farm Parmesan Goldfish Crackers are the best snack cracker ever invented. It pains me that most gluten-free crackers are terrible. If something's going to be devoid of nutrition (as most snack crackers are), it should at least taste great. Store-bought gluten-free crackers never do.

When we went gluten-free four years ago, Wyatt was one year old. Parenting was very new, the toddler years were just beginning, and with the dietary restriction, the usual toddler snack foods weren't going to work for us. It was time to start figuring out alternatives.

Some of the first snack foods I made regularly were Anytime Cookies and Gluten-Free Cheesy Mini Goldfish Crackers. I stumbled on the cracker recipe pretty early in my search, and I have never strayed. It's fantastic. And even though I have yet to spring for two expensive (and no doubt time-consuming to use) tiny copper goldfish cookie cutters here or here, I think it's fair to conclude that the crackers taste great whatever shape they are. (But see UPDATE below.) Wyatt would desperately like to test this hypothesis, of course, and eat crackers shaped like tiny fish. So maybe we'll spring for those cookie cutters someday. Meanwhile, though, I do like the speed with which I can make random cracker shapes with the pizza cutter.

The recipe at Gluten-Free Canteen is perfect as-is. And here's what it looks like when I make gluten-free not-goldfish-shaped knock-offs with a pizza cutter:

And just like the "real" Goldfish Crackers, it's really hard to close the bag and walk away. Our half-gallon jar of them is already one third gone...

6/5/16 UPDATE: Imagine my surprise last Thursday when we received an unexpected package that contained two tiny copper goldfish cookie cutters. Our friends had sent them. We made more crackers today, this time with the shiny new cutters. And while I would have expected the goldfish shapes to taste the same as the random shapes, they don't. The goldfish shapes consistently bake so there is a delightful bubble in the body of the fish, and this bubble vastly improves the texture of the crackers. I was right about the cookie cutters taking more time, but it's so worth it.

Pop-Up Owl Mittens

Three years ago, I tried making my first original pattern: a pair of crocheted fingerless owl gloves for Wyatt. Last week, I published my latest (and best) version of those owl gloves: Pop-Up Owl Mittens. They are knitted (not crocheted), with or without half-fingers, and they have a convertible mitten top.

In other words, I have learned a lot in three years.

In 2012, when I found myself getting back into projects with yarn, I had zero confidence in my knitting ability. Years ago, in high school, I had knit myself several sweaters, but you would have never guessed it. By 2012, I could do nothing useful with two needles at the same time, and the thought of dropped stitches deterred me from trying. For whatever reason, though, crochet felt doable. First, I crocheted myself some "steamer trunk" grey fingerless gloves. Once my hands were warm (secure your own oxygen mask first!), I realized that Wyatt's hands were probably cold on winter preschool hiking mornings. So I improvised some crocheted gloves for him, and I included a little owl on the front.

Our fingerless gloves were good, but not great. I knew that (from a distance), our gloves looked knitted, but for some reason, the crochet-masquerading-as-knit bothered me. Also, I didn't love the super cushy crocheted fabric. But those reservations didn't stop me from making Wyatt a bigger size of crocheted owl gloves the following year. Not only had the first owls grown tight on him, but they were so well-loved their eyes had unraveled. Wyatt opted for purple wool for his second pair.

By fall of 2015, Wyatt had outgrown his purple owl gloves. It was time for another new pair, and by then, I was ready to take a new approach. I had already successfully knit him his striped hoodie without a pattern, so when he asked me to make him a pair of owl gloves that had half-fingers in them, the project seemed very doable. I proposed we add a flip-up "hat" to keep his fingertips warm, and Wyatt thought that was a splendid idea.

The first version of these imagined gloves, however, was not splendid. The thumbs were a little wonky, and the cuffs and pop-up tops were too loose. Every time Wyatt wore them, he requested that I PLEASE make the next pair so that he didn't have to keep pulling the mittens back on to his hands after walking a block or two. A fair criticism if ever I've heard one.

So I went back and knit the convertible mittens again, based on the notes I had written as I was knitting the wonky-thumbed-ones. This time, though, I knew I was close to a good design, so I used the yarn Wyatt had chosen as his favorite: Sincere Sheep's Shepherdess yarn in Vitamin C. This version turned out so well that for awhile, Wyatt refused to wear them out of the house for fear of messing them up. Eventually, he came to believe me that we could wash them, and in the worst case, I could always make more. They look adorable and Wyatt finds them totally functional.

But not everyone loves the color orange. And as Brooke Sinnes (of Sincere Sheep) explained when I visited her in her booth at the gigantic trade show that is Stitches West, sometimes it's hard for people to imagine what a pattern will look like in other colors. Brooke's inspired recommendation to embrace a "seasons" color palette for my first trio of patterns (which includes the Pop-Up Owl Mittens) was perfect. I set off with some of her Cormo Worsted and made smaller and larger sizes of the Pop-Up Owl Mittens.

Such happy little owls.

I am so pleased that after writing (and, thanks to my patient editor, rewriting) this pattern, anyone who feels like knitting can make their own Pop-Up Owl Mittens...in less than three years.

Curiosity, Nature, and Knitting

Last week didn't feel like a series of days for me. It felt like a bunch of fragments that never seemed to add up to anything useful. All fits and starts, with ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, and by Wednesday, I finally accepted that it was probably going to be one of those weeks where I'd get nothing real accomplished.

But I was wrong! First of all, I got some reading done.

Since October 2015, I have read exactly two books. Abysmal, I know. I used to read all the time, and now? Knitting fills my eyes while podcasts fill my ears. I know, I know—audio books!—but I have yet to warm to them.

The book I started in October and finished last week was Proof: The Science of Booze, by Adam Rogers. Don't let my many months of reading it fool you—it was an absolutely terrific read. I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in alcoholic beverages or science.

The second book I read, I started on Thursday, neglected it over the weekend, and finished it on Monday. I could not stop reading it (and reporting the most interesting parts to Wyatt and Marc). The book is Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness, by Nathanael Johnson. I heard about it on one of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible.

This is a book I wish I could have read during the years when I was walking around with baby (and later, toddler) Wyatt. Back then, I had a child who loathed his car seat and his stroller. His screaming was ear-splitting, and heartbreakingly frustrating. No loving words, kind pats or white-noise app on my phone could soothe him. As a result, I drove sparingly and spent hours walking with him in one baby carrier or another all around the neighborhood. As Wyatt became more aware of his surroundings, he'd start to point at things he noticed. "Tree!" I'd say. Or "Flower!" depending on where it looked like his chubby finger was directed. And as he grew older, he would hear a bird chirping and sign, "Bird." So I'd say "Bird!" But as the months rolled by and our urban nature walks continued, I became acutely aware of how few types of trees, plants, or birds I could identify. I went so far as to research whether there were urban nature walks where someone would identify things for you while you strolled, so I could learn. Sadly, all walks I found directly competed with nap time, so I never went, and I didn't pursue my curiosity further.

Nathanael Johnson, on the other hand, took a very similar experience with his daughter and turned it into a way of appreciating the "Urban Wilderness." He followed his curiosity, studying the "boring" or even "disgusting" plants and creatures we find everywhere in our urban landscapes. Then he wrote about them so engagingly and informatively that I finished his entire book in just two sittings.

I think this book grabbed my attention because, in addition to my early urban nature walks with Wyatt and our ongoing fascination with bugs, slugs, and plants, I sometimes feel torn between city life and what I imagine country life must be like (thanks, Instagram!) I struggle with the whole "Be Here. Now." thing in our busy, tech-driven city. As it turns out, there doesn't need to be a struggle, you just have to start actually seeing things. Thanks to a narrative that's as informative and persuasive as it is funny, I followed Johnson on his own journey of learning about turkey vultures, snails, squirrels, ginkgo trees, crows, and more. As I saw how we can connect with the natural world, I felt more compelled than ever to start exploring. Cities (with green spaces) are teeming with nature, and believing that I have to go out to the wilderness to experience nature is just silly.

As Johnson wrote on pages 63-64,

We see what we expect to, what we have a name for, what pops immediately into our heads. But confirmation of the expected is boring, and false. Life only becomes interesting when you watch it closely enough to see something surprising, and with that surprise come a little closer to the real thing. That, I suppose, is the point of this book: to allow people to see past their expectations. When actual seeing pierces the skin of habituation, if only for a moment, it permits a bit of wonder to bleed through.

Marc, Wyatt and I have decided to follow Johnson's helpful and remarkably practical recommendations for becoming "Neighborhood Naturalists."  We have binoculars and can easily find a magnifying glass. It will be fun to keep a journal and identify one species a month. And Wyatt already determined in preschool the rampant weed he loves to eat (sour grass), so he's ahead of us in that regard.

But I didn't only get reading done this week! I also had the most amazing Saturday at Kira K Design's knitting retreat at the Marconi Conference Center. I received the most inspiring introduction to Fair Isle knitting from Janine Bajus (The Feral Knitter, and photos of some of her amazing designs appear below), learned all about pattern adjustment from Kira, and connected with some other truly wonderful entrepreneurs, including Sunni Scrivner, who owns the the shop Yarn, in Eureka, and designs her own patterns, Maria Isabel, who owns A Needle Runs Through It and makes terrific project bags, and Brooke Sinnes, the woman behind Sincere Sheep and the yarns I love so much. The setting was beautiful, and the company was the best.

More than that, nature was everywhere! including in our classroom, when a terrified-looking hummingbird found itself in the track lighting and could not determine a way out. Luckily for the bird, one of my classmates had handled similar situations before and carefully carried it out of the classroom after it collapsed and fell to the floor. Seemingly no worse for the wear, it buzzed off after catching its breath while perched on a flowering bush (the name of which I of course do not know...yet).

Mystery Garden

"Mom. We HAVE to put stakes or bamboo sticks or SOMETHING in there for the peas to climb."

Just before Christmas, Wyatt and I sowed six planters of different kinds of cool weather vegetable seeds. In some planters, we even planted two kinds of seeds. When we were done, Wyatt informed me we HAD to label the planters RIGHT THEN. But I didn't want to get out the label maker with him (because for every label I make, he insists on two for himself) and I couldn't find the masking tape. Then it rained for awhile, so I put him off some more because the labels wouldn't stick to the pots. And then we both forgot about labels until mid-January when we went outside to empty the saucers under the planters. Surprise! Everything had sprouted except the peas, the only planter and seed combination we remembered.

Our little mystery garden practically pleads for me to be a better planner and organizer. The saying, "A stitch in time saves nine," also occurred to me, finger waggle and all. But rather than considering how I could become someone who does things like this right the first time, I'm thinking about the possibility that I can just learn to be more free with the label tape.

Over the last few weeks, some of our mystery seedlings have begun to reveal their identities. The radishes are obvious—fast growing and decidedly radish-like by now. The peas finally sprouted and are growing taller and taller. Just yesterday, I provided a tomato cage to satisfy their grabby little tendrils. I also noticed the beginning of feathery leaves on what might be a carrot, but because everything else in that pot looks decidedly not carrot-like, I still can't reach a conclusion about those seedlings. The rest of the planters remain a total mystery.

In an attempt to get some yield from all of the mystery plants, I read the backs of all the open seed packets for thinning recommendations. But because I can't say with certainty which packets of seeds we used for planting and which we didn't, or where they are, I simply attempted to average what most of the packets advised and applied that rule to all of the mystery seedlings. I like to think that if we were relying on me to grow the vegetables we'd eat this year, I would have handled seed sowing very differently and set us up for better results.

Details are obviously important. And as much as I like to think I can keep all the details about everything straight in my head, I have now proven to myself (once again) that I can't. Luckily for all of us, though, I wrote down the date we wrapped our Camembert-style cheese to age in the refrigerator. We have been counting down the days until taste test day, otherwise known as this past Wednesday. Our cheese was delicious, and there was no question that we created a Camembert. The flavor and texture were unmistakable. We also started another batch of chèvre that we will age, hopefully without the unwanted ecologies from our last batch. Wyatt took to heart David Asher's suggestion to taste our cheese before we age it. He slurped up almost an entire bowl of fresh chèvre curd.

As of today, we have officially run out of space in the refrigerator in which to age cheese. We are aging our blues, a second batch of Saint Marcellin, and I have just nestled in a second cave to house the chèvre cheeses.

I suppose this refrigerator real estate limitation is for the best, though, because although we want to make all the cheese now, I need to focus for the next couple of weeks on the details of my knitting patterns. Believe it or not, I think I have found a tech editor, and that means I've got a deadline!

Reinvention

Last week, I chatted with a husband and wife, parents of one of Wyatt's classmates, at a cocktail party. They were incredibly friendly and unassuming, but a few minutes into our conversation, the woman asked the question I've come to dread the most in social situations. She asked, "And what do you do?"

When I'm asked, "What do you do?" I often want to shout in response, "EVERYTHING AND NOTHING!" But because that kind of response would be rude, I usually look away, maybe down at my feet, mumble something about what I used to do and what I used to be, and then trail off about how I'm now a stay-at-home mom.

I'm not ashamed of my current occupation, but I am not at ease with it, either. When I was younger, I was adamant that I would never, ever be a stay-at-home mom. I remained firm in my resolve until shortly after Wyatt was born. When I stepped away from the legal profession, I had absolutely no plan for what I would do next. It has been almost five years since I quit my job, and I have yet to figure out my next move. I feel like I have never been busier day-to-day, or less productive (or less important) in the eyes of society. And while it felt liberating to shed my "lawyer" title, being a "stay-at-home-mom" sometimes makes me fear that I am betraying the feminist movement simply by breathing air.

But my cocktail party friend wasn't asking big questions when she asked what I do. She was just trying to find out about me. As I began to mumble my response to her question, I felt myself look down at my shoes. In that moment, though, I suddenly noticed my feet and felt how firmly they were planted on the floor. Feeling unusually calm and secure, I looked up at her again, and just as, "I practiced law for awhile, in Los Angeles and here in San Francisco, but I don't do that anymore," was out of my mouth, I heard myself add, "and if I were being fancy, I'd tell you that right now, I'm in a 'period of reinvention.'" To my amazement, she and her husband laughed appreciatively and said they might have to borrow that phrase sometime. We went on to have a lovely conversation. And yes, I talked a bit about making cheese and knitting.

Reinvention is proving to be pretty challenging for me. Exploring things is fun when it goes well and disappointing when it doesn't. Take this week in cheese, for example. Thanks to David Asher's email consult, I learned that our aging goat cheese had taken a wrong turn. I had initially emailed him not thinking anything was really wrong with our cheese. I was just curious how I could dry out the cheeses because they were sticky. But they shouldn't have been sticky, and by our third email exchange or so, he had seen a photo of our cheeses. David's diagnoisis: Unwanted ecologies.* The cheeses are now in the compost. But because we can all learn from failures, here are photos of our failed cheese:

And before you decide I'm crazy for ever thinking we could eat these, I want you to know that they look worse in these photos than when I first emailed David. I'm not sure what went wrong with this batch, but it smelled about as good as it looks.

One nugget of advice that David offered in our email exchange was that we should always taste our cheeses fresh before we put them to age. We have now tried enough batches of cheese to have an opinion of what tastes great, so we will keep up this practice, now with more educated palates.

At the same time our cheese was falling prey to unwanted ecologies, I completed knitting a trio of children's accessories I designed in Sincere Sheep's Vitamin C color of Shepherdess yarn. I started with a pair of convertible gloves, moved on to a reversible cowl and finished a coordinating hat the other night. All three designs have already been through at least two iterations each at this point because Wyatt is so clear on how he wants his accessories to fit. He loathes floppy cuffs on gloves or mittens, for example. In the coming days, I'm planning to take some photos, figure out how to write the patterns, actually write the patterns, find someone who can act as a technical editor for my patterns, and figure out how to open a shop on Ravelry. I'm curious whether I'll enjoy this process and whether anyone will respond to my virtual cry of, "Patterns for sale!" in the ridiculously saturated marketplace of knitting designs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've always felt like I'm winning at life when I find the marvelous things and unique details I can bring to what I do. Whether I'm an expert or a novice, and whether the result is amazing or absolutely stinks (even literally, sometimes), I want to feel grateful to be doing my work and learning from it, instead of focusing on how long it's taking and how imperfectly it's turning out. That perspective shift is going to take some practice.

*Who knew there was such a non-judgmental way of saying your cheese is bad?