So the other day I asked which slipper we should bring back (to add to the list of slippers currently available as part of the ongoing slipper phase, Rampant Nonsense and Notable Nonsense folks wander over here to download the ones that are already available), and you picked these lovely, loopy green friends (they’re done and should be out tomorrow, barring catastrophes).

That meant I spent the better part of last week updating the pattern, and it turned out to be a really interesting exercise. These came out in 2019, and I was delighted with them at the time. I was several years into full time pattern writing, very much felt like I had this process down, and was quite confident in my skills. Lots of folks made them, and I didn’t get a ton of questions (I tend to roughly assume that lots of questions = spots where things could be clearer while not a ton of questions = folks aren’t having much trouble). But when I came back to update the pattern last week, I was actually surprised by how much I changed.

And at first, I was sort of cranky about it because it felt like if I changed something, that must mean I’d done it badly in the past. But as I sat with it a bit longer, I realized that almost everything I was changing was to make things easier, rather than to fix a problem.

Over the last few years I’ve really concentrated on making my patterns approachable, even for folks who are fairly new knitters. I try to have lots of progress photos (especially for things like the slippers that have a tendency to look more than a little funny at various stages of the process), and even more than that I tend to have a lot of reassurance and hand holding and reminders and cheerleading along the way.

And it seems to be working! One of the most common things I hear from folks is some version of ‘I didn’t think I could make that, but then I tried it, and it turned out I could!‘ And that always makes me feel fantastic. Because really, once you’ve got the basic stitches down, knitting isn’t hard. Sometimes it’s time consuming or labor intensive or requires a bit of attention to detail, and often it benefits from a bit of practice with things like yarn selection or blocking techniques. But I maintain that an adventurous beginner who is willing to learn new things along the way can knit pretty much anything if they have good enough instructions. So I try to include all the little extras that make more projects more manageable for more people.

I can really see that when I look at how the updated version of this pattern compares to the original. And again, doing it that way now doesn’t mean I was doing anything wrong in the past. It just means I can do it even better now. Which is actually way better than not having found ways to do it better over the last seven years! And I really like the idea of sharing the new version with everyone.

These should be out tomorrow (again, assuming the sea monsters don’t rise from the depths and consume the state of Maine or similar before that). Rampant Nonsense and Notable Nonsense folks will get the pattern (don’t fret, anyone who had the original version will get the updated version automatically, just like always).

And I’m sort of feeling like maybe we should bring back the other ones too…because it was really nice to revisit these (and holy smokes I’m impressed with how well they both held up, I literally dug these out of the sock basket in my closet to make this video, and other than needing to be blocked, they’re very nearly good as new).

While we wait for tomorrow, how about you tell me something you’ve gotten better at over the last few years. Because I know I can’t be the only one!