Ok so I’m nosy… The retired patterns are back for their summer holiday. They’ve been up since Tuesday morning, and I wanted to see which ones were the most popular. So I did a little bit of swearing at spreadsheets (I did not get spreadsheet autism, I got ‘look at the pretty moss’ autism) and found us some answers!

Among the individual patterns, the top three favorites are:

Nestled (what was that about pretty moss?) (rav, payhip), Abeyance (yup, more moss) (rav, payhip), and Glazed (even I don’t generally eat the moss) (rav, payhip).

Which honestly, yes, I support those choices, those are some of my favorites too! And all three are patterns I have vague intentions of bringing back some day (when I have time, and am not distracted by anything else for long enough to pull it off, and am caught up on everything else I feel like I should be doing…a state which comes around about twice a decade if you’re lucky). But until then, it’s gratifying to know that I’m not alone in loving them!

The three favorite books are:

Silk Road Socks (yes, they’re all my rugs, yes my house is cool) (rav, payhip), Curls 2 (sure, let’s use gray yarn for every single one) (rav, payhip), and Curls 1 (photos taken in my favorite vacant lot in Cleveland) (rav, payhip).

And yup, right there with you. The first edition of Silk Road Socks was my first book and the only one I did with a publisher. And I had…let’s say conflicted feelings about the version they produced. So redoing it myself for the second edition healed something that had been bothering me for literally years. And the Curls books were what showed me I could actually do this job full time, so they’ll always have a special place in my heart.

It’s always a little complicated going through and engaging with old work. These books and patterns mark all sorts of moments in my life, both good and bad, and it’s rather tender to go back and revisit them (especially right now, when the world feels like it’s on fire and things in the past looks so much simpler). But knowing that so many of you love the same ones I do is comforting in a way I can’t really explain but very much appreciate.

They’re back back for a few more days (I’ll take them down Monday or Tuesday, depending on how life stuff goes), just in case you need to make something to mark this moment in your own life. You know where to find them (ravelry, payhip).

And in the meantime, thank you. Thank you for being here for all these years (or for finding me now if you’re a new friend) and for letting me share the shape of my days with you. Here’s to many more years of making tiny nonsense!