For years, this chapter lived inside an 8-hour workshop — slides projected on a wall somewhere between Cape Town and Windhoek, a room full of hooks and needles, and me trying to explain, in the time I had, why the yarn in someone’s hands mattered as much as the pattern …
hildasteyn
Showing: 1 - 10 of 31 Articles
A story about a bohippie jacket
There are things you do not warn people about before they marry a yarn snob.
Performing a burn test on a jacket purchased at an indoor market in Mossel Bay on a Saturday afternoon is apparently one of them. My husband took it in his stride. He is used to me by now.
The Sophie Hood Saga – Part 3
In which everything unravels, and then everything is fine. If you have been following this story, you will know that it began in New Zealand with two skeins of lime green MYak, escalated through two additional yarn purchases, and resulted in what I have been calling the most expensive Sophie …
Home is where we park it
A follower asked about our camping lifestyle recently. It is a reasonable question, and the answer is longer than it might appear. Where It Begins We were campers long before we were permanent campers. Years ago, before life took a different turn, my husband and I were avid campers — …
The Sophie Hood Saga – Part 2
If you read the first part of this story, you will know that I cast on the Sophie Hood with considerable enthusiasm and a completely unreasonable combination of luxury yarns. Three strands held together. A MYak from New Zealand, a Cascade Alpaca Lace, and a Suri Alpaca Silk blend that …
The Sophie Hood Saga – Part 1
There are projects that begin with a plan. This is not one of those projects. It Started in New Zealand Last year, while visiting my daughter, I was browsing yarn online and fell completely in love with two skeins of MYak Tibetan Fibres in a colour called Appletini. Bright lime …
Yarn Review: Aspen Polwarth
There is a particular kind of excitement that comes from knowing a parcel with yarn is waiting for you somewhere across the world. Not the ordinary online-shopping kind, where you track a package to your own door. This was different. This was: fly to New Zealand, hug your daughter, and then — only then — find out whether the gamble paid off.
The story begins tomorrow
Once upon a time, there was a dream. A dream of colour, of movement, of something wrapped around the shoulders that felt like both comfort and magic. A dream that began many years ago… and slowly, patiently, found its way into yarn and stitches. Over the past few months, I …
Stop the doom scrolling
Have you ever opened social media to check one thing… and 20 minutes later you’re scrolling through content you never asked to see? There’s a calmer, simpler way to keep up with the websites you love — and it’s called an RSS feed. What is an RSS feed (in plain …
The Storyteller’s Cloak
Since I was a little girl, I dreamed of a cloak. Not simply something to wear, but something to wrap around myself like a story — a cloak with a deep hood, rich colour, and quiet magic stitched into every fold. It was a dream that stayed with me through …