Cast On

211 Grace Notes

Ghost in the Orchard. Four inches from done. I’d stare at the cable chart and the tiny squares would dance. Close my eyes. Open them. Over and over. The hands that made t

210 Two Bowls

Tears in the kitchen. Three bananas on the counter and a recipe I know by heart but cannot, for the life of me, turn into a sequence of actions. Seven ingredients. Too

209 Desire Paths

An Eye for an Eye - would the animals we eat, eat us? Impossible Hats. Box Hill Picnic, from Jane Austen’s Emma. Dangerous Questions, where the danger is yours, not your

208 Nighthawk

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Nighthawk n. a recurring thought that only strikes you late at night. Mine struck every night for eight weeks. Zopiclone is a sle

207 Too Much World

Trimethoprim for a UTI. Seven days. By day three, everything was hysterically funny. By day five, I could hear things that weren’t there. By week two, I couldn’t track ya

206 Quality

Zabava Shorties disasters. The signs were there. Sometimes, you need to break up with a sock pattern. “It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t like you anymore.” Meanwhile, the Pe

205 Big love and secret pajamas

It's been a week of finishes and new beginnings. Off the needles, I've completed a Malabrigo hat and love the color pooling. You don’t hear me say that very often. I've

204 Cart before the workhorse

Finishing socks, saving the yarn, new projects from old, planning the perfect colourwork sweater, plus a bit of theoretical physics to prove what knitters already know: k

203 Looking in

We travel from Iron Age fire-pits to mid-century homemaking manuals, consider the joys of stash organisation, and muse on the performative aspects of home decorating. The

202 A gentle pastime

Replenishing the sock drawer with Priory Socks (project page). My Secret Circles, below. Porthos (project page), below. I moved my decreases to the back of the heel, a

Cast On Classic: A Snow Day

In which an American Thanksgiving is celebrated in the UK, albeit a day late and a pumpkin pie short. One of the first pieces of writing I recorded for Cast On in 2005,

201 Knitting through sorrow

It’s autumn. Time for finishing projects, knitting socks and celebrating the impending winter by taking the sweaters out of storage. This one is all knitting, and I make

200 Work as written

Off the needles and on; Tour de Fleece wrap up; notes from the production line; a new bag; a new spindle; good materials; and Bennet’s Boiled Potatoes. Compared to some,

199 The system

Knitting the slowest sock in the history of sock knitting. Tour de Fleece. The merits of taking small steps vaguely in the direction a goal. I’m thinking about style agai

198 Picking up the threads

House projects have broken me; the summer of socks continues; the red that bled; Tour de Fleece; and a return to Clifford Byway.  My new obsession for shorties led me to

197 Gradual Stiffening

The weather. Men in shorts. The run down. Ta Da moments. And the moments just before a plan comes together. The Red Edge is complete! The chart for Red Edge was designe

196 A wide variety of displacement activities

In this episode: The party dress; picking up threads; a project round up; and the big idea, spoken aloud. The High School Art Teacher Dress by Vogue [(V1410)](https://si

195 You can't keep everything

In this episode: Stash enhancement; hat boxes of joy; the rug of sorrow; knitting memory lane, letting it go. Repeat after me: It is okay to rest. Thank you, past Brenda

194 What I did last summer

In this episode: Undone by Cosmo/Cosmo undone; colour blocking that didn’t stitck; a summer romance; a bounty of beautiful sock yarn; packing projects for a journey with

193 The waiting phase

In this episode: I have more projects on the needles at one time than ever before, and I talk about all of them. Also, we're buying a cottage, and trying very hard to rem