She's Crafty, And She's Just My Type

Um, yeah. I'm crafty. You may have heard that I knit. It's not an idle threat. I didn't write a knitting romance because it was the In Thing to do. I did it because I couldn't do anything else.

I've been known to be crafty in many ways over the years, cross-stitch, crochet, quilting, sewing, but it always comes back to the knitting that I learned when I was five. Knitting feels like breathing to me. People who say it feels meditative? Feh. I don't know if I ever felt that. It's autonomic. It's part of my body, and I don't have to think about it (unless I'm REALLY thinking about it, and that's fun).

So, a photo-essay of some of my favorites over the years. (Forgive all the self-portraits -- I'm a selfish knitter.)

Cromarty:














Cromarty is a classic Alice Starmore design, and it took months on size US1 needles. But I was so proud of it when it was done, and it's worn like iron. I wear it now to write in the early mornings.

This next one was one of my first original designs, done in alpaca which was way too hot for me to ever wear. I think I wore it twice, but I remember it being the moment I decided that yes, I did kinda know what I was doing:















Then I took up spinning fiber. I never really got into dyeing, but this was my first hand-spun sweater, and I dyed the fiber with Kool-Aid. This was Black Raspberry, I believe, and sometimes, if I get caught in the rain, I still get a whiff of it (and it matches my cheeks!):















This next one is the sweater I'm most proud of:















It's a replica of a Norwegian sweater my mother had commissioned for herself in the 60s when she was there. I reverse engineered it from my mother's sweater and knit a copy of it. As I knit the sleeves (I always knit sleeves first), I could almost see my mother's arms growing from the ends of my needles. So many hundreds of times I had been held within the safety of that sweater growing up, and to see another sweater, growing from my hands, was truly wonderful.



















My wedding stole. I designed it from a couple of Babara Walker motifs, in alpaca, so it sheds like crazy, and I never wear it now, but I love it. It was perfect, just like that drizzly, happy day in Vancouver.
















The Cade Sweater: This is the sweater that goes along with the plot (pattern included) in my book How to Knit a Love Song. A non-traditional Gansey with raglan shaping, this actual original sweater will be raffled off at some point in the future. (Sign up for my mailing list to keep up to date!)

So really, when it came to writing a novel, when I cleared out all the stuff I thought I "should" write and finally wrote what I wanted to write, it wasn't surprising what came out. And I'm so happy I got what I did.