Before we start, I want to acknowledge that literally none of us are ok right now. Not even a little bit. If you’re in America, you’re watching your government murder people in the street and strip you of your bodily autonomy and take away what little access to healthcare you have and raise the prices of everything you have to buy to survive while we all hold our breath and wonder if we’re actually in civil war yet or just flirting with one. And if you’re in the rest of the world, you’re watching an evil, incompetent man send the one of the world’s most powerful militaries off to invade other countries and bumble his way into World War III. All because too many of my fellow Americans could not bring themselves to vote for a competent Black woman over a fascist felon who told us exactly what he was going to do if we gave him the chance.

So I say again, absolutely none of us are ok. And we’re not going to be ok for a while, because this has to get worse before it gets better. And while it gets worse, we still have to get up and eat breakfast and take the cat to the vet and put out the garbage and pay the electric bill and switch the laundry and take the books back to the library and check on our neighbors. And do our jobs. Because everything is on fire, but we still have to do our jobs.

So I’m going to do mine. But please know that if you’re feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and scared and furious and both frozen and filled with the urge to do something, anything, to dull the pain, that’s totally reasonable. I’m right there with you. And so is everyone else. You don’t have to pretend to be ok. None of this is normal. But dammit, I’m still going to do my job. Because it’s how I survive, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let these fuckers beat me.

And today, my job is to share something with you. Because the next three patterns coming out all use turned hems. And they’re one of my very favorite techniques. So I figured I’d write up a little guide to turned hems and share it with you all (you can download it at the bottom of this post, anyone with any sort of patreon membership including the free one can have it). Just in case you want something to distract you from the horrors for a moment.

Look for the snowflake hat here in a few days (it’s done save for pictures, and as soon as I can take them I will, but it’s January in Maine, and I’m not going out until it’s slightly less perilous). The orange one is next, and the blue and gray one will follow soon after.

In the meantime, hold your people close. Call your senators and congress people and tell them to stop all DHS funding. Call your governor and tell them to kick ICE out of your state. Call your mayor and tell them to keep ICE out of your city and to tell your police department not to work with ICE. Find a group in your area that’s doing something and go to one of their events.

Or at the very, very, very least, use accurate words to describe what’s happening (“a masked ICE agent murdered an unarmed American citizen and called her a ‘fucking bitch’ while his fellow agents stood by and prevented a physician from rendering first aid” is a hell of a lot different than “a protestor was shot” and you damn well know it) and don’t pretend any of this is normal or ok. Because it’s not. And it’ll only get better if we do something about it.