Last night I started joining the squares of the Namaqua Blanket. Forty-eight small blocks in six colours, eight blocks per colour. Four with green centres and four with soft yellow centres within each colour group. Thirteen large blocks, two per colour, with one colour getting a third. Half with green …
living the slow life
Showing: 1 - 10 of 22 Articles
Namaqua: ‘Make a Big Blanket’
On the tenth of August I was sitting outside our tent, knitting. That is not a remarkable sentence in my life. It is most of my life. The birds were busy with whatever birds are busy with in the early part of the day, and I was as peaceful as …
The Learner Has Passed the Master
Someone asked me recently why I do not design intricate knitting patterns. It is a fair question. My crochet designs have complexity — construction that takes thought, stitch patterns that require attention, garments that demand something from the maker. But my knitting patterns are what I call Measure and Make. …
Forgive and Forget — The Lie We Were Told
The previous post opened something I was not entirely expecting. Messages arrived. Privately, carefully, from people carrying things they had not said out loud in a very long time. The same struggles. The same weight. And threaded through many of them — the same question about forgiving other people that …
One Strand at a Time
I realised something this morning. I am not sure when it changed. I am not sure how. But somewhere in my fifties, quietly and without announcement, something shifted — and I only noticed it today, sitting alone with my knitting and the sounds of whatever is happening outside. Let me …
Knitting Through the Madness — A Menopausal Confession
Let me tell you about yesterday. We went to town for groceries. Simple enough. Two shops in, my husband quietly handed me the car keys and suggested, with the patience of a man who has clearly been paying attention, that he would get the last few things. He would meet …
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.
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 …
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.